Town boss Kieran McKenna has launched a robust defence of the rotation policy which has come under scrutiny from some fans in recent games and says it’s important that it doesn’t become a bigger narrative than getting behind the team.

McKenna has regularly made five or six changes with games coming thick and fast - the Blues are currently in a run of seven matches in 22 days - and with the squad having undergone extensive changes over the summer.

Following the 2-1 defeat at Oxford on Friday and then Tuesday’s 1-1 draw at Blackburn Rovers, when McKenna admitted his team had played poorly, the regular changes of personnel faced criticism from some supporters, as have some of those individual players coming into the side.

Asked his thoughts on how the rotation policy is progressing and it having become a talking point, McKenna said: “I know it’s a topic and I can speak about that at the end. You can’t remove it from the context of where we are as a group and a club first of all.

“I’ve been a manager here for four years now and we’ve had lots of periods where we’ve had settled teams and consistency and, of course, every manager in the world would like to have a group that are playing really well, that are robust enough to play all the minutes, that the connections have been built over time.

“When you have that sort of group, you tend to try and be as a consistent as you can be. But that is so far detached from our reality. In terms of our starters from last year, regular, regular starters, probably Dara [O’Shea] and Leif [Davis], I would have thought. That’s the reality of the turnover that we had.

“If we had Axel [Tuanzebe] and Sam Morsy and Liam Delap and Omari Hutchinson, then I think we would have had fewer changes this year.

“We are a group that are building, not from scratch because some of the players were here last year, but with almost a complete turnover after two promotions and a relegation.

“A fair amount of those players have joined in the summer and a fair amount joined with no pre-season, some with injury issues.

“So, from that point, as a group and as a club, when we decide that when we’ve lost players we want to replace them with quality players and have a strong squad, I don’t think it’s possible then to click your fingers and have a cohesive team that’s, certainly in some cases, Sindre [Walle Egeli] may be an easy example because he’s young, ready to go and play every game.

“I don’t think you can compare it with previous years here, you can’t compare it with other clubs because we’re in a really different position in terms of how many new players and how late the group has come together. It takes time to build a team, it takes time to build those connections.

“In my first six months here, there were probably a fair few more changes here than there were in the six months when we were first in the Championship and we were coming off a promotion and the group had played together, physically could do 40, 45 games of a Championship season, had had that time together. We don’t have that group at the moment.

“I’ve said many times, it feels like then we start on 1st September in between three international breaks with some really good players, with an EFL fixture programme when we probably don’t have 11 ready to play every minute of every game.

“We decide as a club that we want to have a strong squad. I’m not someone who is going to bring players to the club, good players who we think can be really good players at the level, and not give them opportunities to play, to prove [themselves].

“You don’t build a team in that way, you don’t build a team on the pitch or off the pitch if you bring players in who are good players at the level and they never play.

“Of course, there’s a process to go through there. That for me is more in relation to where we are as a club.

“Other than that, I’ve said it many times, it’s always going to be a topic. If we’re not winning, in the position that we’re in as a team who have come down from the Premier League, if you don’t win and you rotate, that’s going to be the reason why.

“In my opinion, I’ve not got the scientific formula, but if you look for a correlation with results, I don’t think there is one.

“When we make six changes at Hull and we win, it’s not mentioned. The games that we’ve lost this season, Preston, we played the same team and lost. Middlesbrough we played the same team and lost. Oxford, with Jens [Cajuste] injured, we only made three, which with a Tuesday night and Friday night away is pretty minimum changes, and we lost.

“So I don’t think there’s any correlation between that and the points that we’ve had. I can make many, many different arguments on it. But at the end, I know that if you don’t win, that’s always going to be the story.

“Of course, we want to get to a more consistent group, but that doesn’t usually happen straight away, not with the context, not with the position we’re in. That takes some time and we know a lot more about the players now than we did on 1st September and I’m pretty sure on 1st February we’ll know a little bit more on who’s working well with who and what the best partnerships are and what are the best teams.

“And hopefully on 1st February, we’ll have a really good group with very few injuries, as we do at the moment.

“It is what it is. If we make a change and we don’t win a game, that’s going to be the story.

“I know there is another world you can imagine up where we could have gone with a much smaller squad and picked the starting team from 1st September and played them in every minute and then the performances would have been better and we would have taken all our chances late in games and we’d have more points.

“But there are many other ways that world could have played out as well and, for one, simply, I don’t think I’d be sitting here with a fully fit squad.

“Of course, there are other realities, but as a manager, the only reality you live is the one that you do.

“And it’s what we believe is right for the club. The same way, whenever we’ve been here and not made changes or had more consistent teams, we felt it was the right thing for the club.

“Of course, we want to work back through to that sort of position again with the team. With the schedule we’ve had in the last month or two, I don’t think it’s been possible, even on schedule, availability and fitness alone. So, that is what it is.

“What I will say is, and this I think is important. If we bring in a new group of players we want to really, really get behind them.

“If we allow this internally to become such a big narrative because players read stuff, players know how the perception is for them or against. Some of the players we could mention, they’re two, three, four, five appearances into their time at the football club.

“I can understand any opinion, I can take any perspective. I’ve have enough good and bad days in my career already to roll with any, it doesn’t matter to me, I’ll always do what I think is right for the club and for the group.

“But the one thing I would ask is that if you’re an Ipswich Town player and you’ve been trusted to come here to the club and brought here for a reason and you’ve wanted to come here for the right reasons, which all the players have, that we get right behind whoever plays.

“When it supersedes that, when it becomes a bigger narrative than getting behind the players who are playing, then that becomes detrimental to the team and detrimental to the players.

“That’s where we’re at. We’ll pick the right team for the next six games that we have in December and keep trying to do the right things for the team and hopefully the team will pick up good results, starting from tomorrow.”

Photo: TWTD