Town boss Kieran McKenna says new loan signing Iván Azón will enjoy the physical challenges of the Championship.
The 22-year-old Spaniard’s season-long loan move to the Blues from Serie A Como was confirmed last night, a fortnight after the initial switch, which included an obligation to buy at the end of the season, broke down.
"We’re excited to have Iván here,” McKenna said. "He’s a player that the club has tracked for a while, from his Real Zaragoza days. He’s been on the radar of the recruitment team for a while.
"He’s a forward I think the supporters will really get behind. He works really, really hard for the team, uses his physicality well.
"Of course, the Championship is a step up on that, but I think he will enjoy those physical challenges.
"He’s a player who plays with his whole heart and who is one I think the supporters will really get behind.
"He’s got good qualities on the top line, he runs behind well, he battles centre-halves, he’s shown that he score goals in different types of way and he’s very young.
"Of course, with any player coming into a new league, there’s an adjustment period, but we think he’s got good qualities for English football.
"We think he can impact it, hopefully straight away, but, of course, we need some patience from everyone in terms of fully getting to the rhythm of things, and he’ll certainly have that from everyone here at the training ground and, I’m sure, from the supporters as well.”
McKenna says Azón is ready to play having had a decent pre-season with Como, scoring four goals in five games.
"He’s been involved in quite a lot of the pre-season with Como and was on the bench for them at the weekend,” he said.
"He hasn’t had 90 minutes, he hasn’t had a competitive start in a while because he had some injury issues in the second half of the season after he moved to Como, so he hasn’t played much competitive football lately.
"But he had a full pre-season, was involved in quite a lot of their pre-season friendlies, so we think he’ll be available for limited minutes pretty quickly.”
Might he be in the squad for Derby? "Not impossible. I’ll have some more conversations with him now when I come out of this room.
"He trained with the group today and he’s been training with Como earlier in the week, so we’ll make a judgement call on the squad. Not impossible he could be involved tomorrow.”