Injured Cardiff City stars Peter Whittingham, Steve McPhail and Mark Kennedy could be back for Saturday's top six clash at Leicester City.

Manager Dave Jones revealed after the Bluebirds' lack-lustre 2-0 defeat at Ipswich that the trio are heading back to fitness. And he warned that he would use their return to shake up the team that failed to perform at Portman Road.

Whitts limped out of last month's home game with West Brom with a torn groin muscle, while Kennedy is nearing recovey from a torn calf muscle. Macca injured his ribs during the match with Peterborough on February 9.

Dave said: "Hopefully they'll be back. We must be careful that we don't expect too much of them, especially Stevie, but they might put the jitters up one or two players and get them worried about whether they can keep their place,

"Because that's what we need now, we need to knuckle down and get a bit of competition because certain players just think there's nothing there for them in terms of competition and just think they will keep their place.

"And that's not healthy in a football club - you've got to have competition."

Dave was angry that his players did not compete with lowly Ipswich in a match that saw keeper David Marshall save the Bluebirds from a thrashing.

The gaffer said: "We didn't perform, we didn't pass the ball as well as we can and we didn't create any real chances. We didn't show any creativity and the two goals we gave away were stoppable if people had done their jobs. We allowed the initiative to be taken from us from the start.

"David Marshall gets paid for making saves but he had far too many to save today.

"Certain people need to take a long hard look at themselves from game to game and ask themselves why they performed on Saturday and didn't tonight. Hopefully we can get one or two back over this week and the people that we feel didn't do enough we can leave out.

"We've got our problems on and off the pitch at the moment but we're scrapping to stay in the top six.

"The first goal was a poor goal, an awful goal, and the second goal, from the set play, was even worse because people were running out and leaving their markers and we were relying on Dave to hold it together. I'm not just talking about defenders, I'm talking about the whole team, because we didn't stop the supply all over the pitch.

"Ipswich deserved the victory today, It was disappointing all round from our point of view.

"If any player here is saying that our off-field problems are preventing them playing well, then he might as well leave the club, or any football club for that matter. Players have a great habit sometimes of blaming other things for what's going wrong.

"Some of these players have an opportunity to get a regular spot to play because of the lack of numbers we've got and the injuries we've got. But if they want to keep that shirt, they have got to keep playing well, and some of those playing at the moment possibly feel they are under no pressure because there's nobody to take that shirt. That would a sad indictment of that player, but one or two of them might be thinking that."