McKenna: We Know We Need a Run of Results Thursday, 2nd Feb 2023 17:18 Town will be aiming to win back-to-back League One games for the first time since October when they visit the Abbey Stadium to take on Cambridge United on Saturday on what could prove a significant afternoon at the top of the division. While the Blues will be looking to win their first ever league match away against the U’s, leaders Plymouth will be travelling to take on second-placed Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough. Town are currently seven points behind the Pilgrims and four off the Owls, who have a game in hand on the Blues and Argyle. Kieran McKenna’s side cantered to a 4-0 home victory over Morecambe in their last league game and then held Championship leaders Burnley to a 0-0 draw in the FA Cup fourth round on Saturday, building on the momentum from the win against the Shrimps. With Cambridge struggling one off the foot of the table, it’s the type of match the Blues are going to have to win if they’re to finish the season in the top two, but manager McKenna says that makes it no different to any other league fixture between now and May. “I think we’ll try to win every game with everything we can,” he said. “The Morecambe game was an important game, we’re at a stage of the season where people are going to label probably every game as ‘must-win’. “What does that mean as a group? We have to give absolutely everything that we can to the game and do everything we can in our powers to prepare for the game to give ourselves the best chance to win and then put everything into the actual game to try and win it. “But that shouldn’t change whether it’s a must-win, whether it’s Cambridge or Sheffield Wednesday or Bristol Rovers after that. “We know that we want to get to run of results and we need to get a run of results to be in a really good position in the table and that’s where the focus has to be. “But beyond that, it has to be about doing the right things and focusing on what you can control and controlling everything that we can going into a tough game against Cambridge and making sure that we fight with everything we’ve got to get the points.” Cambridge, who are second bottom but level on points with the three sides above them, are without a win in their last five, having lost four in a row until last Saturday’s 0-0 draw at Lincoln. Their 2-1 win at home to Shrewsbury on Boxing Day is their only league victory in 11 matches. At home this season, they have won five, drawn two and lost six. The U’s are the division’s joint-second lowest goalscorers having netted only 23 times in 2022/23. At the Abbey Stadium they have scored 12 times with only four clubs have bagged fewer on home turf.
Cambridge have conceded 46, the fourth most in League One, 16 at home, the ninth highest in the division. When they visited Portman Road and were beaten 3-0 in October, the U’s were 10th with their form just starting to slide, but McKenna is surprised that their season has fallen away so sharply since the early stages of the campaign. “I would think so from what we saw earlier in the season and last season,” McKenna reflected. “I haven’t followed them in detail before Christmas and the run of results they have had. “They did very well to get promotion and establish themselves in the league so well last season and get off to a very good start this year. But it is a very competitive division and the margin in a lot of games are very tight. “They have had a run of games where it hasn’t quite gone their way. They still have a good manager [Mark Bonner] and a good team, with some good individual players, and I am sure they will be looking to put together a run of form now they have steadied the results a little last weekend. “I am sure they are looking to pick up a run, but we are certainly in the same boat. We want the points and we need the points and we will be focusing on how we can get them on Saturday.” McKenna says the U’s have been strengthened by the additions of experienced centre-halves Michael Morrison, the Bury St Edmunds-born 34-year-old rejoining the club where he started his career from Portsmouth earlier this month, and one-time Blues academy player Ryan Bennett, 32, who moved from Swansea. “We know that’s going to bring challenges and we know what type of game we are in for. The most important thing is focusing on ourselves and the things we are going to have to do to get what would be a very good result.”
Having made eight changes to the team which hit four against the Shrimps for the Clarets cup tie, McKenna is likely to have plenty of players believing that they’re worthy of a start this weekend. “You want to have decisions to make all the time and certainly if you took the last two games, Morecambe and Burnley, there were a lot of players who started the games and did very well,” he said. “On the other hand, the boys, Cameron Burgess, Kane Vincent-Young, Kyle Edwards and one or two others who didn’t start either of those games, have trained really well this week as well and are competing for places. “So we’ve got lots of players competing for positions. That’s how we want the squad to be and it’s the healthy position that we want to be in. “Competition is fierce at the moment, it has been that way in training this week and the players who are lucky enough to get the start against Cambridge know that they’re competing for themselves to perform as well as they can to keep getting minutes. “But they also know that they’re representing a group that has worked hard during the week and only 11 can start the game and it’s those 11 that have the responsibility to represent the rest of the group to fight from the first minutes of the game to be in the best position to win it.” McKenna, whose side will be backed by 1,473 travelling fans with a couple of thousand more watching the beamback at Portman Road, is likely to continue with Christian Walton in goal, despite Vaclav Hladky’s excellent showing against Burnley. At the back, Harry Clarke will probably return on the right, while McKenna will have to decide between Luke Woolfenden and Richard Keogh for the role in the middle with George Edmundson likely to continue on the left having been involved in both back-to-back clean sheets in the last two games. Widemen Wes Burns and Leif Davis are back in training following minor knocks which saw them miss the Burnley match and seem likely to start in their usual positions. Skipper Sam Morsy will be in central midfield alongside Lee Evans, while 15-goal top scorer Conor Chaplin will probably be partnered by Nathan Broadhead behind central striker Freddie Ladapo.
Cambridge head coach Bonner believes his side is a lot stronger following the additions of Morrison and Bennett, as well as midfield pair George Thomas, who came in from QPR on a deal to the end of the season, and Charlton's Conor McGrandles, who joined on loan. “I don't remember a window were we've signed players with such experience at this level,” Bonner told BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. “It's the reality of January that you have to take in players that have been injured, or are injured, or are at the later stages of rehab. “You want to add the right players - there are plenty of players available, but if you're going to take someone, you want them to impact your team really. “We were delighted adding them because, with the players that we have returning from injury, it makes the squad a heck of a lot stronger. “We're going to have a big squad - a lot of cover in every position - so we might have a few players not involved on matchdays. I have a lot of empathy for the players on that. “But if you look at the injury record we've had this season, we have to be fully stocked. We need to give ourselves options.” Thomas won’t be involved against the Blues due to a hamstring injury, while another of their January signings, full-back Steve Seddon, who joined on loan from Oxford, is out having fractured an eye socket and cheekbone on his debut. Town have only met Cambridge competitively on nine occasions with the Blues winning three, the U’s four and with two games ending in draws. The Blues' only victory against Cambridge at the Abbey Stadium was back in 1993/94 in the League Cup when they won 2-0, having been 2-1 in front from the first leg. In October, the Blues made it through to the knockout stage of the Papa Johns Trophy, despite a 1-0 defeat at Cambridge United in their final group game having been reduced to 10 men in only the 17th minute following Kyle Edwards’s controversial sending off for a second bookable offence, referee Thomas Parsons having adjudged the winger to have dived when video evidence clearly showed he had been fouled. The Blues had been largely in control but the home side began to get on top in the second half and sub Lewis Simper’s 79th minute goal sealed the victory for the U’s. A fortnight previously at Portman Road, Town recorded their first ever league win against the U’s when Edwards scored his first two goals for the Blues and Tyreece John-Jules his second of the season in a 3-0 victory. The visitors frustrated Town until the 72nd minute when John-Jules came off the bench to make the most of a Cambridge slip, then fellow sub Edwards added the second three minutes later with a cross-shot, before completing the victory with four minutes left on the clock with his second of the evening. Last time at the Abbey Stadium in October 2021, Joe Ironside scored an 88th-minute leveller as the U’s came from two goals behind to draw 2-2 with Paul Cook’s Blues. Town looked to be coasting to victory after Sone Aluko had netted on 10 and 36, his first Blues goals, but James Brophy pulled one back for the U’s before half-time and the home side completed a deserved comeback when Ironside headed home two minutes from the end. The Cambridge squad includes Town youngster Jack Lankester, who joined them in the summer of 2021 following his Portman Road release. Lankester, a boyhood Blues fan, came through the academy ranks at Playford Road and went on to make 13 first-team starts and 17 sub appearances, scoring three goals. Centre-half or midfielder Paul Digby moved to Town from Barnsley in January 2016 before making the switch permanent the following summer. He made a total of seven starts and five sub appearances without scoring. Central defender Bennett, who joined the U’s from Swansea earlier this month, was an academy player with the Blues before being released at 16 and joining Grimsby before going on to play for Wolves, Norwich and Leicester in the Premier League. Cambridge midfielder Shilow Tracey, who moved to the Abbey after being released by Spurs in June 2021, had a trial at Town in 2015 when a 17-year-old with Ebbsfleet United's academy and featured for the Blues’ U21s. Currently injured Town midfielder Dominic Ball spent a spell on loan with Cambridge in the second half of 2014/15, making nine starts and two sub appearances. Blues striker Joe Pigott, who is on loan for the season at Portsmouth, spent 2016/17 on loan with the U’s, scoring once in nine starts and eight sub appearances. Midfielder Idris El Mizouni, currently on loan at Leyton Orient, has had two spells on loan at Cambridge, the first more successful stint in the second half of the curtailed 2019/20 season and the second in the first half of the following campaign. In total, the Tunisian international made 12 starts and 10 sub appearances for the U’s, scoring one goal. Saturday’s referee is Sam Barrott, who has shown 80 yellow cards and two red in 29 games so far this season. The West Riding-based official will be refereeing Town for the third time having officiated in the opening game of the season, the 1-1 home draw with Bolton Wanderers in which he booked Woolfenden, Evans and two visitors. Barrott awarded the Trotters a 23rd-minute penalty, Blues debutant Davis having tripped Conor Bradley, which was converted by Aaron Morley. He was also in charge of Town boss McKenna’s first match as Blues manager, the 1-0 home victory over Wycombe Wanderers at Portman Road in December 2021 in which he booked Morsy, Pigott, Matt Penney and one Chairboy. Squad from: Walton, Hladky, Clarke, Donacien, Woolfenden, Edmundson, Keogh, Burgess, Burns, Vincent-Young, Davis, Leigh, Morsy, Evans, Luongo, Humphreys, Edwards, Chaplin, Harness, Aluko, Broadhead, Ladapo, Hirst, Jackson.
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