McKenna: We Certainly Won't Have Everyone Back
Sunday, 31st Dec 2023 10:56

Town boss Kieran McKenna hopes to have one player back from illness or injury for New Year’s Day’s trip to Stoke City, while skipper Sam Morsy will return from his one-match ban

During Friday’s 0-0 home draw with QPR, the Blues were without George Hirst, who looks to be out for a while with a hamstring injury, Leif Davis, who has a minor calf problem, and Wes Burns and Nathan Broadhead, who were among a number of players and staff to have picked up an illness, the latter having been sick in the warm-up after being named in the initial XI.

“We’re sort of still in the process of assessing, to be honest,” McKenna told TownTV when asked whether there had been any progress on the fitness and health front.

“We not had too much time since then, we’ve got a training session this morning and we’ll have to see how some players are.

“We certainly won’t have everyone back, we’ll have maybe one from the other night, hopefully.

“We’ll see how they are today. It’s one where we’ll have to take the decision on the morning of the game.”

Asked whether there is anything the club can do to prevent the spread of the illness bug, McKenna added: “We have protocols and since Covid clubs have a lot more familiarity with how to limit the spread of viruses and things like that, so we’ll take as much precaution as we can and travel as separated and spaced as we can and things like that.

“But other than that, just fingers crossed that everyone comes through the next 24 hours healthy and well and we’re ready to go for tomorrow.”

One positive ahead of tomorrow’s match is the return of Morsy, who was suspended for one match for Friday’s match.

Young striker Gerrard Buabo made his league debut as a sub late on in the QPR match but McKenna says the 18-year-old, who has been out with a recurrent hamstring problem, isn’t ready for greater involvement at this stage.

“As I said after the game, it was great to get him on the pitch to see him play,” McKenna said. “But medically he’s not there yet.

“There was a big discussion internally whether he could do five minutes plus extra and that was the maximum, really. He needs to build himself up.

“Is it possible that he could play a similar sort of time as he did the other night over the next couple of weeks? Possibly, but he’s still in the reintegration process from a really big injury and he’s a player we really like so we need to be careful with him.”

Photo: TWTD

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Eeyore added 09:39 - Jan 1

You could tell that Williams wasn’t well but perhaps had covered it up to get a start. He might do better if he plays against Stoke. Broadhead will be ok for the bench hopefully. Burns had the illness earlier so expect him to be ok. If Leif is back in then we have enough to win it. If not and we are struggling then we have players who keep battling and hopefully we get us a point. KM looked very unhappy with the poor passing and interceptions at QPR. Expect that to improve at Stoke.

Hatman2 added 11:12 - Jan 1

As we’re still depleted today, I’d take a point which would keep us in 2nd spot regardless of what Saints do at Carrot Road.

Rest all the ‘crown jewels’ at Wimbledon, lots of rotation, I have tickets but want to see the ressies in basically so the first teamers can recover as best as possible to go hard at Sunderland on 13th and beyond. New signings by then would be massively helpful if possible too!

Europablue added 11:25 - Jan 1

blueboy1981 The problem with canceling all festive fixtures is that football as a business is first and foremost about entertainment and we all love to watch football over the Christmas period. There should be rules set out by the league that require certain player welfare standards so that clubs aren't setting up players to get injured, but the rules have to be across all clubs as we can't just trust every club to conform voluntarily.