Town boss Gary O’Neil says new signing Emersonn is continuing to make progress after he struck his first goal in pre-season against Rayo Vallecano at Portman Road.

Emersonn became the first arrival of the O’Neil era when the Blues agreed an initial club-record fee of £24m with Toulouse, the striker becoming the first Brazilian in Town’s history.

Currently with George Hirst and Chuba Akpom for competition as the number nine, the 22-year-old has been the main starter throughout the Blues’ pre-season schedule.

O’Neil revealed Emersonn has been working on his fitness ahead of the Premier League opener against Sunderland kicking off in just two weeks’ time.

“He’s getting there,” the Town boss said. “He didn’t have as good a summer as the rest of the lads. The rest of the lads had done a lot of fitness work through the summer and Emmy came back in not as good shape as them, so he’s a bit behind which I think you can see.

“Today was a big day for him. He’s working very hard and he’s trying to get his fitness. He’s normally incredible, all his work at his previous club, the amount of running and pressing actions that he gets through and how many times he can run in behind and the speed he has.

“He’s not quite at 100 per cent at this moment and we need to help him get there. Today will help, it was a good hour for him with a goal and an assist.

“A good performance, he’s a young striker with a lot of work that we need to do and get into him to help him with some of the deficiencies he has in his game.

“His attributes will cause teams problems, especially if they leave big spaces like there was today.”

O’Neil admitted there are still some rough edges in Emersonn’s game, but that he was particularly pleased to seal his transfer from Toulouse during the early weeks of the transfer window.

He said: “Number nines are always difficult to get, so we knew we were going quite early on it. We made a call on it to get it done early rather than wait and see what else was around.

“Let’s get that done, get him in, and spend as much time as possible trying to get him up to speed on what we do and what it needs to look like for him. That will help him, definitely.

“He’ll be a fantastic player for the football club. Short term, he’ll be more inconsistent than he will long term. When you shop abroad and you take a young one, there’s going to be a little bit of a transition to the level, but he’s taking it all on very well.

“Really pleased with him today, I thought he showed he’s going to cause teams some problems.”

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