McKenna drops team selection hint and provides squad update ahead of huge Southampton clash

Ipswich Town boss Kieran McKenna says changes are likely for his side’s huge clash against Southampton on Tuesday.

Ipswich could essentially secure promotion to the Premier League with a win, given their much better goal difference than third-placed Millwall.

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But a Southampton win, however, would see them move to just one point behind McKenna’s men heading into the final game of the season.

Leif Davis has missed the last two games and McKenna says he will be assessed before the clash.

“We will make those assessments today through training and talking to the players tonight,” he said.

“There was no doubt there was fatigue on Saturday. I’ve talked enough about the schedule, but three away games in six days at this stage of the season is really, really tough.

“We will do the assessments. At the start of the period we wanted to be relatively consistent with our selection and give the players a chance to create a good dynamic, and I think we have done that in the last few weeks.

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“But we also have other players ready to go and a team of people ready to contribute, so realistically it’s going to be necessary to refresh some positions on Tuesday night and we’ll make a decision on those positions.”

Southampton come into the match following their FA Cup semi-final defeat to Manchester City on Saturday.

“Southampton is probably the only team that has had a schedule that looks like ours over the last few weeks, so this might be a game where we can’t talk about freshness as much because both teams have played a lot,” McKenna said of Tuesday’s opponents.

“Different emotions leaving home, fighting for a championship point rather than being at Wembley playing maybe the best team in the world in a different competition, both are just different mentally.

“We know where we are in the season, we know we’re playing a good team, they’ve played a lot of games, we’ve played a lot of games and it’s about being ready for tomorrow night’s game.”