Ipswich Town: Kieran McKenna on replacing Sam Morsy at Arsenal.
Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna has alternatives to replace banned skipper Sam Morsy for Friday’s Premier League game against Arsenal (8.15pm, Amazon Prime).
Morsy received his fifth booking of the season in Saturday’s 4-0 home loss to Newcastle and will now face a one-game suspension.
Kalvin Phillips made his first appearance since getting sent off against Leicester on November 2 by coming on as a second-half substitute against Newcastle.
Jack Taylor excelled on his entire Premier League debut against Bournemouth earlier this month, and he backed it up with a late winner from the bench versus Wolves.
Massimo Luongo, meanwhile, hasn’t played since a late cameo in a 2-1 win against Tottenham in late November.
McKenna stated that he has several choices for partnering Jens Cajuste in the midfield.
“Massimo (Luongo) has been unwell for the past week or two, so we’ll have to see how he is.
“It was great to see Kalvin (Phillips) on the pitch in the second half of the Newcastle game. That was significant. He’s still sort of making his way back.He had a better week with his ankle last week, felt no pain throughout the game, and exercised well today (Christmas Eve). I suppose ‘100%’ will come after a few more games, but the ankle problem he had has improved significantly.
“Jack played well against Bournemouth, of course.Neither is a direct substitute for Sam, but they can perhaps contribute their own talents.”
Axel Tuanzebe (hamstring), Chiedozie Ogbene (Achilles), and George Hirst (knee) are all still out, but six-goal leading scorer Liam Delap is back after serving a one-game suspension.
“He was a loss (against Newcastle), no doubt about it,” McKenna confessed. “He was always going to be, so everything worked out.
“It’s critical to have him back. “We’ll need his strengths in the game.”
The Blues manager has confirmed that his players would practice on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. He stated, “We gave them a bit of a long weekend off, but now it’s a proper flow through to the Arsenal game.” These types of games do not come along very often in a career, so we want to give ourselves the best opportunity of making the most of them.
“The group’s trained well today and we’ll be in over the next three days preparing as well as we can.”
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