Ipswich Town striker George Hirst set to see specialists over knee injury as Jack Taylor goal sees Blues defeat Hoffenheim

Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna has revealed striker George Hirst is set to see specialists regarding a knee problem having been absent from their mini-training camp in Germany which ended with a 1-0 win against Hoffeinheim over the border in Austria.

The former Leicester City player sustained the injury in last weekend’s 2-1 defeat to Fortuna Düsseldorf at Portman Road, which comes after fellow forward Nathan Broadhead was ruled out for two months with a hamstring problem.

“George has got an issue, an issue from the game last weekend, so he’s not been with us this week,” McKenna told journalists in Kufstein, following a game which saw Jack Taylor score the only goal, just before half-time.

“He’s seeing some specialists and we can’t update on the definite timeline yet, but we’ll do so as soon as we can.”

However, there was an injury boost for the newly-promoted Premier League club with Welsh international winger Wes Burns recovering from his ankle issue from the Fortuna match to come on in the second half against Bundesliga outfit Hoffenheim.

“He’s not trained until yesterday, partial sessions really, so we haven’t had him and a couple of other players through the week so we have been really light in numbers,” McKenna said.

“But we managed to train with a bigger ground yesterday, Wes being part of that so he was able to get some minutes and no problems in the ankle, so that’s a positive.”

Elsewhere, under-21s winger Nico Valentine is expected to be out for around a month with the dislocated shoulder he suffered in yesterday’s game against Borussia Mönchengladbach.

Valentine was stretchered off and went to hospital with the former Needham Market and Bury Town loanee reportedly missing the U21s flight home as a result.

The Hoffenheim friendly victory, against a side that will feature in the Europa League this season, saw Omari Hutchinson getting his first minutes of pre-season, from the start, on the left of the attacking three, having been out with a minor niggle.

And recently recruited left-back Conor Townsend came off the bench to make his first appearance as a second-half substitute.

The pivotal moment in a promising opening half came in the 43rd minute when Leif Davis played a short corner to Hutchinson whose low ball, after cutting inside, found Taylor unmarked at the far post to fire in from eight yards out.

Taylor and Burns were both denied by the post in quick succession in the second half while Aro Muric and his replacement Christian Walton were both required to make a good save each to keep the Suffolk side in front as they bounced back from last weekend’s defeat.

And McKenna felt his side had given a better account of themselves as they build up to their Premier League opener at Portman Road against Liverpool with one further friendly to come, at home to OCG Nice next Saturday.

“Another good challenge, a step up in the opponent again and a really good workout,” he said.

“It was a tough game, we managed to get minutes into lots of players. There were some good improvements on things from last week that we wanted to improve on.

“We had spells where we dominated the game with our pressing and managed to pin them into their half and we had a spell later in the game where we had to see the game out and show resilience, two qualities that we’re definitely going to need to show. The boys showed that today.

“I don’t think there were any injuries on what was probably a pretty dangerous surface with the downpouring of rain there’s been in the last 24 hours, so to come through it without any big issues is a big positive.”

He added: “I wouldn’t say it was comfortable, I thought it was a hard-fought game. But certainly first half we managed to play the majority of the game in the opposition’s half, which is always nice, and the same at the start of the second half, we managed to play the majority of the game in their territory for the first 15 or 20 minutes.

“In the last 20 or 25 minutes, we had to defend together as a a team, lots of substitutions, tired legs and we saw that bit of the game out well as well.

“We don’t place importance on the result of the pre-season games in particular, we want to see progression and certainly saw progression in some things from the last couple of weeks.”

Of Taylor’s goal, which came having been moved back into a central midfield role alongside Sam Morsy, following an attacking wide role against Fortuna, McKenna said of the former Peterborough United player: “Such a really good finisher, so you always want to get him in positions to shoot as much as possible while still contributing all the other things to the team.

“I thought he played well amongst quite a few others as well. I thought he performed really well in the role.”

Ipswich Town: Muric (Walton 75’), Johnson (Tuanzebe 46’), Woolfenden (Edmundson 46’), Greaves (Burgess 46’), Davis (Townsend 62’), Morsy (cpt) (Luongo 46’), Taylor (Carr 73’), Harness (Ayinde 86’), Chaplin (Foyo 86’), Hutchinson (Burns 46’), Delap (Ladapo 62’).