Mick McCarthy will once again be without Daryl Murphy and Luke Varney for Saturday’s trip to Middlesbrough, but the Ipswich manager revealed he could take a look at another of the club’s younger players.

Murphy hasn’t played since suffering a calf injury while away with the Republic of Ireland last month, while Varney has missed the Blues’ last two games.

Sixteen-year-old Andre Dozzell started Tuesday night’s draw with Fulham and, while McCarthy insisted he wouldn’t be fielding a young side against the league-leaders, said he could opt to give another, unnamed, youngster his chance.

“I may have a look at one, possibly, and the view would be that if he’s involved in the squad and he’s got to play at some point we need to know (if he’s ready) and it’s a good game to find out, that’s for sure.

“But I won’t be tinkering too much, I think we have a duty to everybody else in the league.

“I know we’ve a duty to ourselves, but we still want to win the game and to try to get something out of it, so I won’t be experimenting too much.

“I’ll keep who it is to myself for now because I may not do it.”

McCarthy is also hopeful of Teddy Bishop being involved against Middlesbrough after he played 90 minutes, and scored, for the under 21s at Sheffield United on Monday.

“We’ll just see how he is tomorrow,” McCarthy said.

“He’s just had a break off it because if he’s going to be involved on Saturday I need him to be fresh. It was his first 90 minutes for about a million years.”