McKenna: No New Injuries But It Won't Be the Same Team Monday, 20th Oct 2025 17:15 Town boss Kieran McKenna has no new injuries but confirmed there would be changes to his team for Tuesday’s home game against Charlton Athletic, one forced with midfielder Azor Matusiwa suspended after reaching five bookings. Last time the Blues had a three-game week, McKenna made six changes for the midweek match with Bristol City. Asked whether he will make the same number of switches of personnel for the visit by the Addicks, the Blues manager says the precise figure doesn’t come into his thinking. “We’ll see,” he said. “It won’t be the same team. How many, it’s not something I think about, really, the number of changes. “You look at the balance of the team. You don’t want too many unfamiliar partnerships, so you try and get some partnerships in the team that you think can do well. “We’re going to have new partnership in midfield because it will be the first game Azor doesn’t start, but you look at different partnerships and you want enough players who familiar with those around them, players who are going to complement each other well. “The schedule’s going to be really busy between now and January so there’s going to be rotation to manage the fixture list. “It’s helping us at the minute in terms of the availability, it’s a strength of ours, it can be a strength of ours, so we’ll pick the team that we think is right, not off any desired number of changes or anything like that. We’ll just pick the team we think is right for the middle of three games and that can do well and win the game.” McKenna says he has no new fitness issues to contend with: “We’re fine, same basis. Wes [Burns] is working his way back into team training [after his ACL injury].” Quizzed on Ben Johnson’s lack of involvement since the Portsmouth match, the Northern Irishman added: “Ben’s fit and he’s been training really well, I have to say. Of course, there’s stiff competition at right-back with Darnell [Furlong] and Ashley [Young] have done well in their games since they came into the team. “Ben we know is a really versatile player, has been training really well, both at left-back and higher up on the right-hand side as well. We know he can give us good options in those positions as well as at right-back. “But at the moment, we’ve got pretty much everyone fit and we have had for probably five or six weeks apart from Wes and Conor [Townsend, out for the season with an ACL injury], the two long-term ones, we’ve hardly had a player miss a day. “We don’t expect that to continue right the way through, opportunities will open up. We hope that it continues to be really strong in terms of the availability because it will help us, but at the moment, not just Ben but there are three or four players who are training really well and certainly deserve to be involved in the matchday squads who aren’t involved. “That’s difficult but the attitude of all of them has been excellent and I’m sure as the fixtures start to come thick and fast with injuries and suspensions there will be different opportunities for people to be involved.” McKenna says the squad were in on Saturday morning to debrief after the 2-1 defeat at Middlesbrough but that minds quickly turned to tomorrow’s match. “I think that’s the main thing, it’s just Tuesday now, you can’t afford to reflect or wallow if it doesn’t go your way for too long,” he said. “We were in on Saturday morning after a late return. We went through the game, bits that we need to do better in the game, for sure. “It could easily have played out really differently, we had some big, big moments, should have had a penalty before the penalty [we were awarded], had one cleared off the line and the penalty saved, so we know it could have been different. “Bit it’s more important we own the bits that we can do better on and there certainly were some of them, so we looked through them as a group on Saturday. But from this morning, it’s all eyes on Charlton and cracking in on that one.”
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