Town boss Kieran McKenna says players sitting on nine yellow cards ahead of Saturday’s final game before the cut-off at Sheffield Wednesday will be taken into consideration as he makes his team selection, along with other factors, the main one picking a side capable of winning the match.

The Blues go into the game against the Owls without Cedric Kipre, who was booked for the 10th time during the campaign at Stoke City on Tuesday with the Ivorian also missing the home match with Millwall.

In addition, Azor Matusiwa, who has gone 17 games without a caution, Darnell Furlong and Anis Mehmeti are all on nine yellow cards. After Saturday, it would take 15 bookings for a player to face a suspension.

McKenna was asked whether he will speak to the players before the game and whether it comes into his thinking when picking his team.

“Not in terms of any conversations I wouldn’t expect because Azor’s been on nine yellows for so long now,” he said. “If we were speaking about it before every game, then we probably wouldn’t have time to speak about anything else.

“We’ll take everything into consideration, as we do for every game. Fitness being a big part of that, minutes, freshness, we’ll consider all of that.

“You do consider things like yellow cards and possible red cards and things like that when you’re planning a team, so we’ll take everything into consideration.

“But the absolute overriding first consideration is picking a team to go and win the game and respecting the opponent, which we’ll do to the absolute maximum level.

“Preparing the game with great concentration, great humility and going there to try and deliver a performance and trying to get the results.

“So that will be the first factor in any decisions that we make. And then after that, we’ll look at the run of games we’re on and a few injury issues we have and all the factors.”

Matusiwa may not be in contention to complete his remarkable booking-less run having picked up a hamstring issue at Stoke.

Photo: TWTD