United manager Paul Simpson’s pre-Mansfield press conference revealed more worrying news for midfielder Jamie Devitt who, it was confirmed, had suffered a thigh injury in Saturday morning’s training session.
“Jamie was through his groin problem, he trained with us on Thursday and Friday, but he spoke to me early in the session on Saturday to let me know that something wasn’t right,” the gaffer explained.
“We’re hoping we can get him in for a thigh scan today so that we can see what might have happened.
“That isn’t confirmed, so if it doesn’t get done today we’ll certainly get it done at the earliest opportunity. I have to say that we really must wait and see what comes back from that before we comment further, and obviously we’re hoping it’s better news than we think it might be.
“It’s a blow for Dev, he wants to be playing and we want him to be playing, so let’s wait and see and then, once we have the results, we can work at getting him right from there.”
With an update on the others currently undergoing treatment, he commented: “Ryan Edmondson’s improving slowly, if he goes ok over the next couple of days we’ll start loading him up again and we’ll start looking at getting him back on the grass.
"Ben Barclay is back in with us and we hope to get him out on the grass in the next few days.
“All being well that should mean he’s back to full fitness in about three weeks or so. Unfortunately, as I said last week, Tobi Sho-Silva’s tear on his hamstring is healing slowly.
“We’ll continue to look after him and we’re expecting him to be back around the end of this month, or the beginning of October.
“Better news is that Callum Guy is fit and available, as is Mick Kelly. He went along to the Fleetwood game last Tuesday but hurt his elbow during the warm-up with Gabe Breeze and Paul Gerrard.
“He didn’t train for the remainder of the week, but he’s back with us now and he’s fine. The others are the longer-term injuries we all know about, and they continue to get the care and attention they need as they work hard through their rehab programmes.”
And he also confirmed that Sam Fishburn’s loan has been approved, with him heading out of the club today to join Northern Premier League Premier Division side Morpeth Town in time to feature in their home game against Ashton Town on Tuesday night.
“As we said on Thursday, this is a good move for him,” he told us. “Morpeth have actually been interested in him for a number of months, and they wanted to take him on loan at the end of pre-season.
“We felt at that time that Blyth was also a good move, but they’ve maintained their interest and Sam should feel really lucky that he has another club that’s so keen to help him develop.
“He knows he needs to get his head down and impress, and I’m sure that’s what he’ll do. We’ll be keeping an eye on him and we know he’ll be looked after well.”