Town manager Kieran McKenna was delighted with Jaden Philogene’s performance in the Blues’ 3-1 victory over Aberdeen at Pittodrie.
The £20 million January signing from Aston Villa netted twice and was involved in George Hirst’s goal playing in a left-sided role.
"Very good tonight,” McKenna enthused. "His off the ball work first of all was outstanding. We saw last week, he’s capable of regaining so many balls in the opposition’s half, he has a real skill for it. When he works like that, you’re three quarters of the way to a good performance.
"He’s got some qualities, for sure. We’re looking at him in more of the left wing role at the moment. He can do both sides, we didn’t get a chance to look at him on the left really last year, it’s something we wanted to have a good look at and look at his relationship with Leif [Davis] and Conor [Townsend] down that side, different balances that we can use across the course of the season.
"He’s given us something a little bit different on that side. Jack Clarke can give us something from that side, a Broady [Nathan Broadhead] or a Sammie Szmodics can give us something different on that side, so it’s going to be good to have the different threads.”
Davis played a different role against Aberdeen, narrower, more down the middle than Town fans have become used to.
Asked whether that was to give England U21 international Philogene, whose 2024/25 was curtailed by an MCL injuries, more space, McKenna said: "Not just Jaden, we have Jaden and Jack Clarke in the squad, who are both very, very good on the left in wide areas, so we want to have the different balances.
"We know that Leif’s stormed up and down that line for us for quite a few seasons now and done an incredible job and will do that again at times this season, but being able to attack in different ways from different angles with different players with different qualities in different positions will only strengthen us as a team.
"It will be good for those individual players and good for us as a team to have that different type of threat. It’s something that we’ve been working on that across pre-season and will add to us across the season, I think.”