Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna has revealed that he has some more injury issues going into Saturday’s game at Brentford. 

Axel Tuanzebe, Jacob Greaves, Ben Johnson and Massimo Luongo were all unavailable for last weekend’s 2-0 home defeat to Everton. 

All four are still unavailable and, McKenna says, there are some fresh issues on top of that. 

“We’ve had a couple of big injuries to key defenders and have some more challenges going into this weekend,” he said, speaking at this afternoon’s press conference. 

“None of the players who weren’t involved against Everton will come back into the picture this weekend and we’ve got a few other issues that we have to assess over the next 48 hours.  

“Ben Johnson is still out with a small thigh injury. There was a possibility he could have made it for this weekend, but he’s not been able to make it. We’ll have to see how he is next week. 

“The timeframe for Axel (thumb surgery) is still rough, to be honest. He won’t be back before the next international break. We’re still looking at what type of cast can be fitted and when it would be suitable. It won’t be before Tottenham.” 

The only player who has returned to fitness is Napoli loan midfielder Jens Cajuste. 

“Jens has trained in the last two days, so we’ll have to make a judgement tomorrow as to whether he can be involved in the game and for how long,” said McKenna, when asked about the Swedish international. 

Having already used 26 different players in the opening eight league games, McKenna said: “Some players arrived late (in the transfer window) and we’ve had some injuries. You’re going to have these challenges over the course of a season.  

“We seem to be having a period now where we’re going through that. In quite a few positions we want to build consistency and build relationships, but that’s a challenge at the minute.  

“This is a period where we have to stay really strong as a group and come out the other side as strong as possible. There will be other phases in the season where we manage to keep the same group of players available and manage to be more consistent with our selection.”