Blues manager Kieran McKenna says he hasn’t given left-back Leif Davis’s international prospects too much thought, the 24-year-old having signed a new four-year deal with the club earlier in the week.

Davis has arguably been the best signing of McKenna’s management career so far, having been recruited from Leeds for £1 million plus a further £500,000 in top-ups in the summer of 2022.

“He’s been a really good signing for the club,” McKenna said. “I’ve spoken about it before, probably from a club point of view, to spend a million pound on a left-back in League One, before some of things this year, was seen as pretty extravagant.

“But we were really confident in Leif, confident in our model of developing young players and giving them exposure that maybe they haven’t had in terms of a run of games and we’ve tried to stick pretty closely to that model ever since.

“Leif has done very well over the last couple of seasons, had some positive moments this season, some big learning moments over this season and he’s still really young for a defender, he’s still in his third season of playing and each season he’s played in a different division, so he’s not played in the same division twice yet.

“He’s learning step-by-step but we’re glad that he sees this as the best place for him to do that and we’re happy to have him and continue that work.”

Davis has been tipped to become Town’s first England international since Richard Wright won the first of his two caps (the second with Arsenal) in June 2000, but McKenna says he’s not given that too much consideration.

“It’s not something I’ve thought about a lot, to be honest,” he insisted. “There are lots of good English players and I think Leif would answer the question the same, his 100 per cent focus has to be on Ipswich performing as well as he can and helping his club side.

“There’s no energy for anything else other than that at the moment, the challenge is big enough already and I think for all our players, if they manage to do that, if they manage to perform well for our team and for our club, then there’ll always be success and positive feedback in different guises and I’m sure that will be no different for Leif.”

Photo: Matchday Images

KiwiBlue2 added 21:49 - Oct 24 Very sensible comments as usual. Leif has time on his side and if it takes him a bit longer then he will benefit from the experience and development he gets in the meantime. Lets hope we can achieve our first win soon and get that monkey off our back. It will be interesting to see the team that Kieran puts out this weekend, especially the midfield ... coyb
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