Town manager Paul Hurst believes on-loan Chelsea youngster Trevoh Chalobah should be able to feature throughout the season despite his youth, while he says it might take Jordan Roberts, who signed on a free transfer after leaving League Two Crawley Town in the summer, a little while to find his Championship feet.
"I might be wrong but I think if Trevoh’s fit and available he could quite easily do that,” Hurst responded when asked if Chalobah, who recently turned 19 and has started all four of Town’s matches so far, would be capable of managing 40-odd Championship games as 18-year-old Fulham youngster Ryan Sessegnon did last season.
"Whether or not he has another growing spurt, he’ll be some size if he does, but realistically I look at him and what an athlete he is.
"We’ve looked at his data and sometimes you can just keep rolling them out there but what might suffer is the performances, of course.
"But at the minute, I think he’s in a good place. I’m sure if I said to him, ‘Look Trevoh, I’m going to give you a little rest’, he’d look at me a bit ‘gone out’ and be asking to play, so I don’t think we’re at that stage where I’m even thinking about that.
"Looking back on TV, his goal on Saturday was a better finish than I thought. On the day I thought it was a little bit scruffier, but it was a good goal.
"We were just giving him a bit of stick this morning as I don’t think he really knew what to do to celebrate, he was running to get the ball, which is a great intent if we needed to get a goal in the last minute. I was thinking, ‘Just relax a bit, gather our thoughts again and then we’ll go again’.”
Roberts, 24, has so far made only one brief appearance for the Blues as a sub at Rotherham. Hurst says that it’s not down to fitness but competition to get in the team.
"More to do with just earning a place,” he said. "While I guess JD [Janoi Donacien] has come in from a team [Accrington Stanley] that was playing in League Two, they got promoted, and Kayden Jackson, Jordan has come from a League Two side as well.
"He’s shown some things. We had a good chat the other day, we’re looking at more consistency from him on a day-to-day basis.
"In the [recent behind-closed-doors friendly] against Cambridge, he actually played as a centre-forward and did extremely well for the first half.
"But he was always one that was brought in, in truth, that we expected to be, not a project, I hate that word, he’s not an experiment as such, but we expected it to take probably longer for him to get to where we want, if he does at all.
"But there’s a good chance he will be involved in some capacity tomorrow evening and he’s just got to keep working hard on the training ground.
"We spoke again about him understanding the jump and the opportunity that’s in front of him and making the most of that.”