Town defender Jacob Greaves says he is excited at the prospect of sharing a pitch with one of his best friends as he prepares to face Keane Lewis-Potter on Saturday.
Lewis-Potter and his Brentford teammates are the visitors to Portman Road this weekend as the Blues bid to avoid a record eighth straight defeat on Suffolk soil.
Greaves played 86 matches with Lewis-Potter across two seasons in the first team at Hull City having both come through the Tigers’ academy together, and knows all about the qualities that his former teammate possesses.
"He joined Hull when he was about 13 through the grassroots, then I grew up with him from then until under-16s,” Greaves said.
"We signed our scholars together and we got pros at a similar time, he was a little bit earlier than me. Then seeing him flourish and training with him every day.
"I know his ability, he’s probably one of the best players I’ve played with. He’s an unbelievable kid, one of my best mates as well who I’ll probably be going on holiday with in the summer.
"I think he’s a class act and it will be nice to share a Premier League game with him tomorrow.”
Both players are likely to be playing away from their preferred positions at left-back this weekend. Greaves has filled in for the suspended Leif Davis and injured Conor Townsend in recent weeks, while Lewis-Potter, primarily a winger, has been playing in his deeper role since December.
On the positional coincidence, Greaves said: "It’s mental, isn’t it? When I was at Hull, we played a bit together where I was left of a back three and he played at left wing-back.
"In that role he didn’t really help me at all, he was basically playing as a left winger and I’d be playing centre-half and left-back letting him bomb on and do whatever he wanted. He’s technically gifted, quick as well and he’s got a proper future.
"Defensively he was always good enough to do it. One-v-one he’s very good and good in the air too so he can definitely defend the back stick because he’s got a very good leap.
"But I didn’t have him down playing as a left-back, to be honest, but obviously Thomas Frank sees that he can do it. I think it was more due to injury that he was playing there and ever since he’s never looked back and made that position his own.
"[Rico] Henry’s coming back from injury who is a very good full-back on his day so that will be a nice battle between them two.”
The parallels between the pair do not stop there, though. Both boyhood Hull fans reluctantly had to leave East Yorkshire to get their first taste of Premier League football.
Lewis-Potter's departure came in the summer of 2022, and Greaves recalled the moment he found out the Bees had secured his teammate’s services.
"I was with him the day that the move came around,” he said. "We were in Türkiye and I remember it really well. Tan Kesler, the director of football at the time, had us down at dinner and said we’ve accepted a bid from Brentford for Keane and we wish him all the best.
"It happened so quick, he had to wake up early the next morning and fly back and that was that. He moved everything to London and it really benefitted him in terms of turning him into a man and developing his career elsewhere and he’s really flourished.”
While Lewis-Potter's more defensive role has not gone unnoticed, it is Brentford’s forward line that has caught the headlines so far this season.
In particular, the partnership between Bryan Mbeumo and Yoane Wissa, who have both netted 18 Premier League goals this season, has been spoken about as one of Europe’s great double acts.
On Mbeumo’s biggest quality, Greaves said: "Probably his left foot. There’s a lot of left-footed wingers that play out on the right. It’s about trying to cut off the left foot as much but you know they can go down the right and cause problems as well.
"Just trying to be dialled in as much as possible and give myself the best opportunity to stop shots or stop crosses.
"I watch Brentford quite a bit because Lewis-Potter plays for them, so I know how free-flowing they can be. Him and Wissa especially have got unbelievable goal contributions this year, so it’s going to be a real task but one that I’m looking forward to testing myself.
"We’ve all got to be defensively solid and not give them opportunities as much to be free-flowing and attack freely.”
Town saw the best of the Bees’ ruthless attack in the reverse fixture in October, which saw the hosts edge a thriller 4-3 at the Gtech Community Stadium.
Having been one of several Blues players missing through injury that day, Greaves says that there are positives that can be taken from the way the group stuck together.
The 24-year-old said: "I remember watching it on the train back up, in that game we showed our qualities of an aggressive team.
"You look at the way they play very man-to-man, sometimes that can suit us when teams come up against us because we’ve got two forwards that can deal with the ball and take balls in from anywhere in Liam [Delap] and George [Hirst].
"We know that that’s going to come again, but we’ll need the same unity that we showed in the last game in this game if we want to stop them.”