As it always seems to be this season there’s good news and bad news with our latest injury update, with defender Jack Ellis back in the fold just as midfielder Jamie Devitt finds himself in the treatment room with a calf problem.
“The 18 we saw for the Mansfield game is probably what we’ve got available for the weekend, with possibly the addition of Jack Ellis to that,” gaffer Paul Simpson told us.
“Jamie Devitt pulled his calf doing the top-up after the game on Saturday, down at Wimbledon, and he’ll probably be out for four weeks.
“That means we have the 18, hopefully Jack Ellis as well, so this is the group that’s done well and that’s going to see us through for a while yet.”
Expanding more on the Devitt situation, he added: “He picked up a calf strain. He warmed up for a long period in the second half on Saturday and didn’t get used.
“He went out on the pitch with the other unused subs and did the top-up work, as they always do, and I think it was on the second or third run that he felt something in his calf.
“We thought it was a minimal one but he’s been and had his scan today [Tuedday]. The results are back and we’re looking at four weeks, which is a bit of surprise, because it didn’t seem that bad by going off his symptoms.
“We’ve got to just get on with it, there’s nothing we can do about it. Jack's trained well and he's got over the issue that he had, but Dev is a massive disappointment.
“It's just one of those things for him, we had it scanned just for his own peace of mind, because he's had quite a bad calf tear in the past.
“I think I’m right in saying that it’s a grade two, and that’s why I’m looking at four weeks out for him. According to my board we should have Ben Barclay back for the Crawley game and Dev possibly for the Swindon game.
“Ryan Edmondson is out on the grass doing all the physical work now, but he can't do any contact for a couple of weeks, but I've got him down for March. Taylor Charters is down for March, so we've just got to hang in there with this group as well as we possibly can.”
And the end of the week brings surgery for forward Tobi Sho-Silva.
“We’re expecting him to go for his surgery on Friday,” he confirmed. Time wise, I’m not expecting him to be available before our last league game of the season, so he’s somebody who can’t help us in these last 15 games.
“There’s still enough in this group to help us and we’ve just got to make sure we dust ourselves down and get ready to go again.
“The injuries are what they are. I'm not going to make excuses, we can't do anything about it. Injuries are part and parcel of it. Everybody's got good players missing. We have to just accept it and get on with it.”