Leif Davis dropped to the bench for Ipswich’s 3-1 defeat at Sheffield United.
Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna has explained why Leif Davis didn’t start this afternoon’s 3-1 defeat at Sheffield United.
Davis was named on the bench for a league game for the third time in his three-and-a-half year Blues career, with Jacob Greaves starting at left-back.
McKenna said at his pre-match press conference that a player, not named, had picked up a knock in training this week. Asked if that was Davis, he replied: “No, we lost Ashley Young during the week so we had to make a couple of decisions.
“Today, to be honest, the team selection (five changes) had to do with freshness and protecting players.
“Because we’ve gone from a fully fit squad to now having Chuba (Akpom), Jaden (Philogene), Nacho (Marcelino Nunez) and Ash (Young) out, all with pretty significant injuries, all of them.
“Leif put in a big, big shift last Saturday and Tuesday, it’s a long away trip today and Jacob is in good form. We thought, with the numbers that we’ve lost, that it was more sensible to protect Leif a little bit today with the amount of games that we have coming up.
“Ivan (Azon)’s similar. He played really well the other night but he’s not really played many back-to-back games and worked so hard for 75 minutes.
“With the injuries that we have, we need them all fit. We need everyone to play between now and the end of the season. It’s not going to be the same one to 11 every week if you look at the schedule that we have. I do trust people to come in and play in any game.
“We’re going to need the squad. We’re going to need people to step up at different moments. Today, as a team, we didn’t do well enough and we need to own that as a group.”
McKenna has previously said that Philogene (knee) and Nunez (ankle) were looking like short-term set-backs. Picked up on his fresh use of the term ‘significant’, he was quizzed whether those issues were worse than first feared.
“Jaden will be the first one back I would have thought, but I’m not exactly sure when yet,” he replied. “Marcelino will certainly be a few weeks.
“Chuba, hopefully, is not too far away. Ash has been to see a hip specialist early this week. It looks like that could be a little bit more serious.”
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