Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna insists he has plenty of options to replace the suspended Azor Matusiwa in midfield for tomorrow night’s Championship home clash with Charlton Athletic (7.45pm).
Matusiwa has been a integral player in the team since joining in a £7.8m deal from French club Rennes back in the summer, but is now serving a one-game ban after picking up five bookings.
“It’s a loss, of course,” admitted McKenna. “In general, especially in the home games, he’s been growing into the team and going from strength to strength.
“But it is what it is. In the Championship, you’re always liable to pick up some yellow cards in the middle of the pitch. I think our last holding midfielder (Sam Morsy) picked up his fair share of yellow cards as well!
“It’s come a little bit quicker than what we would have wanted, but no one’s going to play every minute of every game anyway. That’s why we have a good squad.”
Put to McKenna that he has no other midfielder stylistically similar to the Dutchman, he replied: “No, probably not anyone quite like him in terms of attributes – how he likes to go and hunt the ball, win his duels and win his challenges – but we have other players who’ve played there.
“Marcelino (Nunez) has played lots and lots of football as a number six, albeit a slightly different type of number six. But he’s played in a double pivot in both roles, played as a single six as well a lot. So he’s got lots of experience in different roles.
“Jens (Cajuste) and even Jack Taylor have done both both played as a deep midfielder and even as the deepest midfielder at times.
“They’re not going to be exact like for like, and that can be a challenge. But sometimes it can be a strength because somebody else can bring a different quality to the role. We will have to find a good balance and set up the team in a way that brings out the strength of whoever’s in there.”
McKenna made six changes to his starting XI for his side’s last midweek fixture. Asked if there’s likely to be a lot of rotation following on from last Friday night’s 2-1 defeat at Middlesbrough, he replied: “We’ll see. It won’t be the same team, but the number of changes is not something I think about.
“You look at the balance of the team. Of course, you don’t want too many unfamiliar partnerships. You want enough players who are familiar with those around them and players who are going to complement each other well.
“The schedule is going to be really, really busy between now and January so there’s going to be rotation to manage the fixtures.
“It can be a strength of ours. We just pick the team that we think is right, not off of any real desired number of changes or anything like that.”
