Joey Barton admits Gasheads may have to wait for Jon Nolan's Bristol Rovers debut, but he hopes the former Ipswich Town midfielder could make his bow soon.
Nolan joined the Gas on Tuesday as a free agent after his contract was terminated at Portman Road, and Barton has tipped the midfielder to make a big impression in the blue and white quarters.
But the 29-year-old has spent more than a year on the sidelines due to a knee injury and the Rovers manager insists the player's body will need to be managed correctly.
Nolan played for an hour in a training match before his Ipswich departure and trained with Rovers for the first time on Thursday, but Barton admits his new signing may need time to get up to speed – meaning he is unlikely to play a significant role against Sutton United on Saturday or at Oldham Athletic on Tuesday.
However, when the ex-Shrewsbury Town star hits his stride, Barton believes the Gas will have a supreme talent for the level in their ranks, with the manager hoping to have him available for the visit of Mansfield Town on February 12.
"The natural want for everybody is to get him on the pitch because I think everybody knows what a good player Jon is," Barton said.
"For us, we’ve got to be very careful with Jon because he has had such a long period of time where he hasn’t been playing regularly, so we will police that and hopefully we can get him involved in the matchday squads as soon as possible.
"This weekend might come a little bit too soon, as might Tuesday, but certainly the Mansfield game we are earmarking to integrating him into the squad, but it will depend on training and everybody’s performance in training merits whether they make the matchday squads or not."
Barton believes a player of Nolan's quality would not have been available to Rovers in League Two if not for his injuries.
The manager, though, has full confidence in his medical staff – which the manager overhauled in the summer – to give Nolan the best chance of being a prominent player for the Gas.
"Nobody is in any doubt of his quality," Barton said. "It’s just about getting him into a position where he can have a consistency of performance and that comes via being available to train every day and managing the load so he can play.
"The reality of it is if we were able to see into a crystal ball and guarantee 12 months of fitness and training every day then you wouldn’t have a Jon Nolan at your club.
"He’d be playing top end of League One, Championship minimum. The fact that he’s had a few niggles is a huge advantage for us and that is the reason I spoke about improving the medical and sport science department because it allows you to find those discrepancies in the marketplace.
"I’m not at Ipswich or other clubs, so you don’t know what goes on in those departments, but you always have to work on the adage that maybe there is something they have missed and there is something you can do to create that robustness in players."
Fellow new signing Elliot Anderson trained fully on Thursday after his arrival on loan from Newcastle United and the 19-year-old midfielder is in line to feature at Sutton on Saturday.
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