There was more good news from manager Paul Simpson on the injury front this week as he confirmed that more players are coming closer to being back in contention, with midfielder Callum Guy also given the green light following last weekend’s scare.
“I’ve said it before, we’re starting to see a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel,” he told us. “Morgan Feeney and Omari Patrick have had another full week of training, and Ben Barclay and Ryan Edmondson have continued with their recovery.
“With Ryan and Ben, it’s more a case of making sure we get it right as to when to get them involved again. We take 19 away with us for Hartlepool and they’re certainly part of our thoughts for Saturday.”
“We’re starting to get closer to seeing Tobi Sho-Silva back, we’re looking to get him as close to full speed as possible through next week, and hopefully he’ll be able to join in training with that in mind,” he continued.
“I want him pushing to show me that he should be starting up front. I want him challenging those who have been out there so far.
“Joel Senior is back out on the grass but it’s still early in his process, even though it is a long time down the road with it having happened nine months ago, but he is starting to get closer.
“It’s more a case of him getting over that psychological block which you get when you’ve been out for so long. He’s still a bit off from joining in with the rest of the group.”
“Jamie Devitt, we haven’t put a timescale on that, but he’s feeling really positive with the second PRP injection he’s had,” he explained. “It could be three weeks, it could be longer, we have our fingers crossed that it keeps going well for him.
“Callum Guy has trained all week, we were concerned that it was the roll of his ankle and that it might swell up on him. He reported in on Monday morning feeling fine and wanting to train.
“Sonny Hilton has had a good week down in Fulham so we’re hoping he’ll be closer to six weeks than the eight weeks we thought it could be.
“The aim is to get all of them back and pushing to be starters, so the more options we’ve got the better.”
Confirming his thinking ahead of the weekend, he told us: “We’ll certainly have one more under consideration and that will add a bit more experience for us.
“I’ve got to be really careful in how I say it, because it can sound like I’m being disrespectful to the lads who have come in, and to people like Ryan Carr and Nic Bollado and Jack Ellis, because they’ve come in and done a real job for us.
“It’s no slant on any of them, or what they’ve done, but we do have a group of players who I believe are starters. Hopefully they’ll all be back in contention soon.”
“I’m hoping our injury worries are over and, when we get these lads back, we start to get a run at it where we have just about everybody available,” he added. “It literally will be like getting new signings when they do start to come back into the reckoning, and I’m looking forward to that.
“But I do have to stop myself when I start to think that in November I’m going to have the likes of Tobi, Ben, Joel, Jamie, and others, because there’s always something that comes to trip you up along the way.
“It would be good to get a decent run of selection headaches. We’ve just got to keep our fingers crossed we keep them all fit.”
And when they do get back into the mix, it’ll be a case of having to do the work to get the starting place.
“That’s what they have to do,” he agreed. “The lads in there now have to play in a way that they’re saying to the players coming back that they have to earn the shirt.
“I told them all before training today that they have to be at their best every single day. We won’t accept anything less. You can’t turn up for training then not do it in the game.
“That’s what I’m demanding as we go into the game at Hartlepool. I went to watch them on Tuesday and Keith Curle has this knack of finding a way to win games in the way he sets his teams up.
“They did that against Doncaster and we’ve got make sure that we’re absolutely at it. We have to start right, we have to go about it in the right way, and we have to perform to our best for 90 minutes to try to get the best result.”