Blues boss Paul Hurst hopes new loan signing Jordan Graham will get back to the hugely impressive form he showed during the 2015/16 season with Wolves before his career was interrupted by torn knee ligaments.
The 23-year-old, who rejoined Town for a second spell yesterday having previously been with the Blues on loan from Aston Villa at the end of 2013, moved to Molineux in November 2014, initially on loan, but didn’t break into the Wolves team until a year later when coincidentally he made his debut in a 2-2 draw with Town at Portman Road.
The Coventry-born wideman’s form in the couple of months that followed caught the attention of plenty of other clubs prior to him suffering the serious injury at Cardiff in January 2016
Hurst says Graham has been on his radar for some while: "He was on the list that we first compiled but maybe for a couple of reasons it wasn’t doable initially.
"We’ve spent quite a bit of the post-match interviews talking about a little bit of quality in the final third just being missing or we haven’t picked the right pass or put in a good enough delivery.
"I think he certainly fits that bill. What I would say is he hasn’t played at this level for a while, so we’ve got to try and get him up to speed quickly and make sure that he feels part of the group, understands his role, what’s asked of him.
"But there’s no doubt that when he broke on to the scene and had that spell where he was much sought-after and a lot of eyes will have been on him to take that jump away from Wolves, so we’ll be looking for him to try and reproduce that form. And if we can we’ve certainly got a player on our hands.”
Might Sunday’s derby come too soon for him? "Possibly, but he has trained for the last two days. Again, he’s got to get used to the way we are and what we want, so we’ll make a call on that later in the week.
"But he’s in consideration. I’m not saying that it will be three or four weeks until we see him, but it’s a big game to go into.
"If you play him and it doesn’t work out then that’s a bad decision, if you play him and it works out, it’s a great decision. Hopefully whatever I’ll decide it will be deemed the latter.”
Including that rich vein of form at Wolves, Graham has made only 18 first-team starts and eight sub appearances since his previous stint with Town almost five years ago.
Hurst admits that the move for Graham, who spent the first half of last season on loan at Fulham where he made only three senior sub appearances, is a risk to some degree.
"I think think there’s an element,” he conceded. "If he’d have played for the last year or so, we might not even be in a position to be able to get him because let’s not forget where he went on loan last year, to a team that’s got promoted to the Premier League. Now, it didn’t work out there, again I think there are pretty obvious reasons why.
"A lot of things you do are a gamble to a degree because it could be someone that’s fit all the time, they could come here and just suffer an injury. They could move to the area and not feel settled, so don’t perform to the standard you want.
"I take the point, but I think there’s an element of risk with most things we do. I’m just hoping that we can get him back to something like the form that he showed because he was certainly a thorn in defences’ sides and created a lot of chances for his team-mates when he was flying and at the top of his game.”