Boss Mick McCarthy says it’s “nonsense” that Town are unable to play all their fringe players in U21 games.
Currently, development coach Mark Kennedy is permitted to field only three overage outfield players plus a keeper in the Blues' Professional U21 Development League Two matches, which has meant that the likes of Anthony Wordsworth have been forced to miss out.
Having made seven changes to his side for Saturday’s 1-1 FA Cup draw at home to Preston, McCarthy said some of the players he brought in were lacking in match sharpness, something he believes the current U21 rules don’t help.
"Don’t start me about U21 games, that’s just nonsense, we should be able to play all our fringe players,” he said.
"It should be a reserve league in my opinion. That’ll probably upset someone, I hope it does and I hope they write to me and we’ll discuss it. It’ll be great.
"I’ll tell them all the reasons because that’s a problem. You can play three of them, I don’t know where the rest are expected to get games. And it doesn’t matter how much training you do, you’ll never replicate that.”
While disappointed with his own team's display on Saturday, the Blues boss felt the League One Lilywhites’ performance shouldn’t be overlooked: "I said to the lads afterwards, Preston played well and deserved their draw and their replay.
"That’s as poor as we’ve played for a while. Maybe that’s down to Preston, of course, maybe we should give them congratulations for not letting us play.
"But we’re sixth in the table, nine unbeaten and it’s pretty good going, actually. We’ve made some great progress. It’s a bit of a dip, but we’ll come back, we’ll be fine.”
Will he make similar changes for the replay at Deepdale a week tomorrow? "I didn’t pick the team I picked to lose it, we just weren’t good enough to win it, unfortunately.
"We’ll go up there and we’ve got a good away record, haven’t we? I’ll have a look at QPR first. I’ll give it my whole consideration after QPR.”