Saturday’s 2-1 win at Blackburn Rovers showed manager Graeme Jones that Pelly-Ruddock Mpanzu and Dan Potts could cut it in the Championship.
Both players have had limited game time this term with Mpanzu largely being deployed off the bench after playing all but 15 minutes of last term’s League One title campaign.
Potts began last season as the first-choice left back but an injury saw James Justin take his place and excel in the role that would pique the interest of Premier League Leicester City, who splashed out an initial £6million for the Lutonian.
His previous two games saw him instrumental in a comical third goal conceded against Hull in a 3-0 defeat, while he failed to track Justin who scored on his Leicester debut in the 4-0 Carabao Cup defeat last week.
But Potts was exemplary at Ewood Park with a number of defensive interventions as Rovers bombarded Town’s penalty box in the final 40 minutes.
After the defender’s third league start of the season, Jones said: “Dan became a Championship player today, no question in my mind. Before, he was flirting with being a Championship player, today he was assertive, and he became a Championship player.
“He has to take responsibility for that left back position because he’s got all the attributes to play at this level, but his mental and physical performance was consistent for 95 minutes.
“The result is going to go your way or not sometimes and that really, really satisfied me, Dan Potts’ performance.”
Mpanzu started the game at Ewood Park after having to settle for substitute’s cameos in the previous four league games.
Jones said: “I thought Pelly came in and gave an exceptional level, with the character that he is. Again, a boy who’s finding the Championship level but today he arrived. He was himself, which is all you ask for, so there were lots of satisfying things, but we’ll enjoy tonight and plan for Millwall, that’s the nature of the beast.”
While Jones has previously praised the likes of James Collins and Andrew Shinnie as finding their feet in the second tier but asked if he’s seeing more and more of his players exhibiting the qualities required from the division, he said: “I think it’s ongoing.
“You collect more players who believe they’re Championship level and we’ve done that, but there are still others that come into the team that need to believe that and I thought Pelly-Ruddock did that today.
“You need to add to the group and if you talk about splitting shifts, we got one player out of Izzy (Brown) for 70 minutes and one out of Callum (McManaman) for 26 minutes. So, you can’t carry anybody at this level and what happened to us today is we didn’t carry any player.”
