Town will again be without forward Jaden Philogene when they travel to Stoke City on Tuesday evening, while manager Kieran McKenna says there are one or two other issues from Saturday’s draw with Leicester which could impact availability.

Philogene has been out of action since the middle of January with an MCL injury, suffering a setback just as he was closing in on a return in late February.

“He won’t be involved for this game,” McKenna said. “Hopefully, he’ll start team training this week.

“He’s working with the coaching staff a little bit now, but not with the rest of the team, so hopefully he’ll get back to that level again now at some point this week.”

McKenna admits he’ll have a selection headache on the left when Philogene does return with Jack Clarke and Anis Mehmeti both impressing in that role in recent weeks.

“It’d be great to have Jaden back, the Blues boss continued. “We have good players in those positions, but you’re always going to miss someone with Jaden’s quality and the different qualities that he brings to the role, so it would be great to have him back.

“And you look at the fixture list, and, of course, after yesterday [Southampton progressing in the FA Cup], there’s another game to be rearranged, so we know how demanding the schedule is going to be and we’re going to need lots of options, availability being really good, and lots of quality to get the results that we want.”

Regarding how the team came through Saturday’s game against Leicester, he added: “We have a few issues from the game on Saturday, it’s still early on Monday morning, so a few will be assessed today.

“We may not have as strong an availability as we have for the last couple of games, but we won’t know that until certainly we get through the back of today.”

Photo: TWTD