McCarthy Delighted With Goalscorer Garner's Pre-Season Impact Tuesday, 25th Jul 2017 22:27 Town manager Mick McCarthy hailed matchwinner Joe Garner’s impact in pre-season after his sixth goal in five warm-up games sealed a 1-0 victory at Colchester tonight. Garner, bought from Scottish giants Rangers but best known for his scoring exploits with Preston before heading north of the border, has now netted six times in five warm-up games the sort of form that McCarthy will be hoping he can maintain when the season gets under way with Birmingham’s visit to Portman Road on Saturday week. McCarthy said: “If we put crosses into the box he’ll score because he’s fabulous and that’s one of his real endearing qualities — the fact that he wants to head it and he doesn’t mind competing against much bigger centre-backs to do it. He was outstanding. “I’m delighted with him and it was a good bit of business by us to bring him here. You wouldn’t want to play against him every week, that’s for sure.” McCarthy could not conceal his delight at the way his players performed as the build-up to the big kick-off continues with Saturday’s visit to Charlton the final leg of the pre-season programme. He added: “I was really pleased with how we played. We deserved to win it and I thought the goal was well worked, a real bit of quality.
"It’s always tough when we play against Colchester because they are local rivals and all that. I think we had the best part of the game and deserved to win. “Last year we had to be good at defending because we gave the ball away far too much. We’ve got to keep the ball better — with a view to scoring goals and not just keeping the ball.” McCarthy will be aiming to finish much higher than 16th, where they were at the end of last season — their worst finish in 58 years — and refused to rule out at some stage using the 3-5-2 system he introduced towards the end of the campaign, despite lining up 4-4-2 in all of the pre-season games so far. He said: “Wing-backs — and 3-5-2 — saved our season. We had the month from hell with Villa away and Derby, Brighton and Leeds, all of them to play, and I don’t think we lost. We won at Villa. I needed to do it, to change it, and it helped to keep us up, that system. “It may well get used again because it’s having two strikers on the pitch, so we’ll see. We’ll just have to see how it works out.”
McCarthy also had praise for wingers Danny Rowe and Bersant Celina, the latter marking his introduction at half-time with several delightful flashes of skill and launching the move from which Myles Kenlock crossed for Garner to head his 57th minute clincher. The Town boss continued: “Bersant was unlucky with his shot. He showed his quality when he just rolled Myles in because I’ve seen loads of them, when they get the full-back on the outside and they make a mess of it. He didn’t. “He’s got a good bit to learn about Championship football but he will. He’s not played in it yet but I’m pleased with the wide lads.” McCarthy is also hopeful of filling the number nine shirt that has not been allocated to anyone yet, although asked if he was making progress on that front he replied: “No, we’re still working on it. We’ll get somebody, I’m sure. “Will it be before the game on 5th August? Who knows? The other thing is not jumping in and taking one when something else might happen. "There are a lot of players, I think, who are at clubs who are not quite sure what they are doing yet. They might do business but some will become available, I’m sure.” McCarthy was also asked if he knew his likely line-up against Harry Redknapp’s team in the season’s opening fixture but with tongue firmly in cheek he replied: “I haven’t got a clue. I tell the players every time, they are auditioning to play in the first team come 5th August.” The Blues boss confirmed that Teddy Bishop (groin) and Luke Hyam (ankle) are both definitely out of that match, while he said Tom Adeyemi (illness) and Emyr Huws (calf) may not be ready, however Cole Skuse (also ill) will be OK to face the Midlanders. Colchester manager and former Blues defender John McGreal felt it was a useful evening for his side, despite the defeat. “It was a great game for us and a great exercise for us," he told the Colchester Gazette. “We’ve done particularly well in the games that we’ve had but against a lot fitter Ipswich side, you could see we were a little bit short in the passing department. “The big disappointment for me was our possession at times. I thought our shape was OK — there are still bits to work on but it just proves that against higher opposition who move the ball quicker, we have to think quicker. “That’s why we put these fixtures in late on in the pre-season and we'll pick the bones out of it and move on to Gillingham on Friday. “We knew Ipswich would be a test just like Gillingham will be on Friday and it’s up to us now to pick the bones out of it with the analysis and still improve. “We created little bits in the second half like when we got into the wing-back area with Kins [Lewis Kinsella] but Ipswich’s extra yard of speed in closing us down put us under that little bit of pressure where we needed to keep our composure. “We started well in the opening 20 minutes but then Ipswich got a foothold on the game and we couldn’t get the ball into Drey [Wright] and Mikael [Mandron].”
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