One-time Blues loanee Reece Brown has lifted the lid on his brief time at Town, revealing that the Blues offered him a contract as his time with parent club Manchester United came to an end with a later move to AFC Bournemouth lined up with then-Cherries boss Eddie Howe.
Brown, now 30 and coaching youngsters at Morecambe and Oldham having hung up his boots after an underwhelming career given his England caps at U19 and U20 levels as a youngster at Old Trafford, was on loan with the Blues from February 2013 until the end of that season, Mick McCarthy’s first campaign in charge at Portman Road.
The centre-half made only one sub appearance in the 1-0 defeat at Nottingham Forest in which Town were reduced to nine men following the dismissals of Lee Martin and Richard Stearman.
In a brutally frank account of his playing career on the Red Devils’ official website, Brown, the brother of former England international Wes, recounts his time with the Blues.
"At the end of that season, I went out again, this time to Ipswich,” he recalls. "I hardly played. They had two centre-backs with something like 900 league appearances between them [Tommy Smith and Luke Chambers], so I was never going to play, but what they want from a young lad in that situation is maturity.
"My ego was telling me that I was a Man United player. They played me in a reserve game and I’ve got a picture of it in my phone which I still laugh at. I’m wearing tights and gloves, thinking I looked the part. Mick McCarthy went mental at me afterwards.
"Last day of that season, I went to the PFA awards. We were told we had a day off the following day, so we went out and enjoyed ourselves.
"Then, 11pm that night, we were told be at the training ground for 9am the following morning. That was a little bit too late for me to save myself. I ended up getting there at 5.30pm.
"McCarthy rang the gaffer [Sir Alex Ferguson] the next day in front of me and the gaffer told him to fine me. The biggest punishment was that I didn’t get to play in the last game of the season, which I had been due to start.”
Even so, as TWTD reported at the time, the Blues were keen to keep Brown at Portman Road and says a future deal had been pencilled in with AFC Bournemouth.
"Despite all that, Ipswich offered me a three-year deal,” he continued. "Despite the fact that my contract with United was almost up, I turned it down because I just hadn’t enjoyed my time there.
"A few years later, I saw Mick again and he explained what the plan was (this bit kills me). He asked me: ‘What happened to Tyrone Mings?’. ‘What do you mean?’. ‘Where did he go?’. ‘Bournemouth’.
‘That would have been you.’
"I knew that Eddie Howe liked both me and Josh King when we were younger. He used to come and watch us in the reserves. It turned out the plan was for me to go to Ipswich, play a season of football and then join Bournemouth in the Premier League. Instead, I turned it down, Tyrone Mings played instead and joined Bournemouth for £8 million.”
Now-England centre-half Mings had joined the Blues from non-league Chippenham earlier that season and went on to move to the Cherries, by then in the Premier League, in the summer of 2015.
Brown added: "A few years later, I had a chat with Eddie about it. First thing he said: ’What happened?’. I had no answers. ‘You had everything. I’ve always wanted to coach you, but you never had that spark to take it seriously.’ There’s the younger me in a nutshell, I guess.”