United boss John Sheridan confirmed in his post-match interview on Saturday that he’s looking forward to having a few selection headaches as more players return to training in the coming days.
“Kelvin [Etuhu] should be available for Saturday, he’ll train with us this week, and Parkesy is possibly the same, but we’ll have to wait and see with that one.
“Obviously Danny [Grainger] pulled out of training on Friday afternoon with a calf problem, and we’ll see what the extent of that is early this week. It’s good news that we have players returning to training because it means we’re getting back towards full strength.
“I’ve said all along that we have a good group here and with these players coming back from injury we’re going to be even stronger. That’s important because there’s another busy run of games coming up and we need everybody ready to do their bit.”
“There are things I keep repeating, but these games leading up to and through Christmas are big games,” he commented. “I honestly believe we have an excellent chance of getting out of this league and I want the players to believe that as well.
“It’s a very evenly matched division for me and you can go out and win every game if you do things properly. If you can get the first goal in any game it helps and, as we’ve seen, we tend to do that way from home.
“Consistency is the magic word and the only reason we aren’t five or six points better off is because we haven’t taken our chances. We need to go on a little bit of a run because I want us to get ourselves in the mix and closer to the teams above us.
“There was a gap starting to appear and obviously wins help. The important thing is the points and if we keep winning it’ll take us to where we want to be.”
With just six weeks now remaining on current agreements for some of United’s loanees he also confirmed that talks about the futures of Adam Campbell, Ashley Nadesan, Jack Sowerby and Jerry Yates [note - Regan Slater is with the club until the end of the season] will be addressed in the coming days.
“I’ll be talking to people over the next week or ten days to see how they feel about these loan deals,” he said. “You need to know first if the player wants to stay, then if their club is happy, and then you can take it from there.
“If you find out that players aren’t staying for whatever reason, that’s when you look to see if you need to bring other players in. We still have a bit of time but that is something we’ll begin to take a look at.”
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