Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna has selection issues for Premier League match against Everton at Goodison Park

Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna has revealed that a lot of ‘late calls’ will need to be made before he names his starting line-up for tomorrow’s trip to Everton.

The Tractor Boys, who had their Premier League relegation confirmed last weekend, will definitely be without the suspended Leif Davis and Ben Johnson for the trip to Goodison Park, while Aro Muric, Wes Burns, Chieo Ogbene and Jaden Philogene all have long-term injuries that ruled them out for the remainder of the campaign.

Conor Townsend, Axel Tuanzebe, Nathan Broadhead, Sammie Szmodics and Kalvin Phillips were also absent from the recent trip to Newcastle United and seemingly have question marks over their availability on Merseyside.

McKenna said: “To be honest, I'm not going to go through so many individually again, but last week we said we were in a really difficult spot and it's not very dissimilar.

“There are going to be quite a lot of late calls, genuinely, because we've got quite a few players who are going to be close for this week, if not this week then a really good chance for next week.

“I think certainly by two games’ time we'll be much closer to where we'd want to be. This one's going to be really tight. We've got quite a few players who are close and we're going to make a late judgement call on them all.”

“At the moment, the approach is dictated by availability. Last week, this week, we've had 13, 14 senior players available in training. So, approach is always dictated a little bit by availability.

“I think our mindset has been to get as many points to the end of season. I still think it has to be that. Try and pick up as many points as we can. Try and perform as well as we can.

“The option to look at one or two different relationships or partnerships or different positional things on the pitch, it would be nice to be at that point, but to be at that point we need to be closer to availability, to be honest, and having players back and ready.

“Then we can maybe look at one or two pairings or relationships or little tweaks that we'd like to have a look at in the last few games. To be honest, we're not there at the moment.

“Our position at the moment is find a way to go to Goodison and compete. We're coming off three really, really difficult games.

“We've got to find a way to go there and get a side and a squad together to go there and compete tomorrow.

“The overriding goal still has to be in terms of the games to pick up points and perform as well as we can.”