Kieran McKenna Discusses Player Injuries, Broadhead’s Return, and Pursuit of First Home Victory

Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna addressed the media ahead of the club’s Premier League home fixture against Crystal Palace on Tuesday, scheduled for a 19:30 GMT kick-off. The following are the main points from his press conference: Defender Axel Tuanzebe is expected to be sidelined “long term” due to a “significant” hamstring injury suffered during the match against Nottingham Forest. McKenna also mentioned that there are “some other knocks” within his squad that are “being assessed”. Kalvin Phillips sustained a rolled ankle against Leicester, and Ben Johnson is dealing with a “small muscular injury”. However, both players participated in training today and are anticipated to be available for Sunday’s game against Bournemouth, even if they are not ready for Tuesday evening. Regarding Nathan Broadhead’s initial minutes of the season played against Nottingham Forest, McKenna stated: “He’s training hard. Hopefully now he can stay injury-free for a period of time.” McKenna expressed that securing their first home victory since returning to the Premier League will be “brilliant”, adding: “We know it will come and we want it to come as soon as possible. In all of our draws at home we feel we could have won. We’ve got two chances to do that this week.” Addressing the demanding December schedule, McKenna commented: “We’re looking forward to it. We’re used to busier spells like this. We’d love to have a full clean bill of health, but that hasn’t been the case. We hope to have as many fit and available throughout this next spell. We’re going into the period positive.” When asked if he would have accepted their current league standing at this point before the season commenced, McKenna responded: “If you’d told me this is where we’d be in December, I think most would have been pretty pleased with that. We know we’ve got another step to make now in winning games more regularly.” Regarding the challenge presented by Crystal Palace, McKenna stated: “Palace have a lot of top players, are picking up some form and we fully respect them. But it’s about us trying to deliver a performance we can get behind. We’ll approach it with a positive mindset like we do every home game. We’ll try and start fast and score early. We believe we’ve got the qualities to go and win the game.”