Ipswich Town: Gutting Wes Burns news emerges | OneFootball

Ipswich Town winger Wes Burns may miss the rest of the current campaign due to injury.

The Tractor Boys are heading into one of their most pivotal runs for a long time. There are eight games to go in the 2023/24 Championship season, and they sit third in the league, just one point behind Leeds United and Leicester City, who hold the two automatic promotion spots, as things stand.

Ipswich headed into the international break in red-hot form. They scored 13 goals in the four matches leading up to the break, rounding off their impressive run with an emphatic 6-0 victory over Sheffield Wednesday.

The scoreline will have made Town fans feel excellent about their promotion chances, but some news regarding Burns, that comes as a result of that fixture, will not help them in achieving back-to-back automatic promotions.

Wes Burns could miss the rest of the season

Burns was forced to miss Wales' Euro 2024 qualification games over the international break after limping off in Town's 6-0 win over Sheffield Wednesday. The 29-year-old had damaged his hamstring, and manager Kieran McKenna said at the time that it did not look good. "It certainly doesn't look like a very minor one," said the 37-year-old after the match, via the BBC. "That's the big disappointment, for his season here [and] for his internationals."

McKenna has now revealed, in his pre-match press conference prior to his side's trip to Blackburn Rovers on Friday, that Burns may not return before the end of the 2023/24 season.

The Northern Irish boss said that it is not an impossibility that the Wales international returns within the next eight games, but that they will have to: "wait and see," as per the EADT.

McKenna added that the winger would not require surgery to fix the muscular issue, and that they will have a better understanding of the extent of the injury when he gets a scan done next week.

Wes Burns will be a big miss for Ipswich's run-in

Even if he does make a return before the end of the season, it will likely only come in the final weeks of the campaign. Town have some tough fixtures in that time that they'll hope Burns can be back for. Trips to play-off chasing Hull City and Coventry City are on the schedule before they finish the campaign against Huddersfield Town, at Portman Road. But ties like Southampton (H) in two games' time would have been the perfect time for him to be around.

Ipswich are blessed with many great wide talents. Omari Hutchinson scored half of the team's goals in their last match against the Owls, and the likes of Nathan Broadhead have stepped up in recent weeks and months. But now more emphasis, pressure, and minutes are going to be placed at their feet, with Marcus Harness being the only like-for-like option other than those two.

Burns also brings a different dimension to the team. When he came off the bench against Bristol City, he massively helped to swing the game in Town's favour.

Not having that option for the foreseeable will be tough to deal with; Ipswich have just got to hope that he can return as soon as possible.