United boss Paul Simpson confirmed that Corey Whelan was fit and training following his Tuesday afternoon scare during the Blackpool reserve game at Penrith.
“He did roll his ankle towards the end of the game when he got involved in a collision on the edge of the box, then made a block at the near post, but he’s fine.,” he explained “He’s fit to train and ok for the weekend.
“And it was good to see Ben Barclay come through it. He’s another who is getting fitter. He’s missed a big period of the season so far so he just needs games, and that will help him.
“He came through it fine, he was breathing very heavily at the end and his recovery runs weren’t as good as they were earlier on in the game, but he got through it and that will stand him in good stead moving forward."
The short-term injuries currently being dealt with are Jack Ellis, Paul Huntington and Dylan McGeouch.
“With jack, there’s definitely something there which is causing him a problem,” he told us. “He played in the game against Forest, and the group who played in that game did a recovery session on the Thursday, with some football work.
“He came in afterwards and complained of some soreness in his groin and hip area. We assessed him again on the Friday and it was too sore for him to come out and train, and it’s been the same since that point.
“I haven’t been given a date for him to return, we’re having to just nurse him back and make sure he gets rid of the pain. He still hasn’t trained so it’s worse than we expected it to be.
“He’s starting to do some gym work and build-up, but he’s not fit for this weekend, so we’ll just have to wait and see. Hopefully next week he’ll join back in training.
“Dylan is back in training, but Hunts still hasn’t joined it. Hunts tried to do some work towards the end of last week and over the weekend, but he wasn’t able to complete it because he was still feeling it.
“Calf injuries are strange because you get to a point where you aren’t feeling any pain in it and you feel as though you’re ready to go, but the minute you start to build-up that’s when it comes back again.
“He had that last week so we’ve taken him off his feet again for a few days. Hopefully by the end of the month he should be right. Dylan is probably ahead of him, he’s fully fit to train, but he hasn’t had the match minutes he needs yet. We’ll just have to keep working with them all and wait and see.”
The longer-term concerns are Josh Kayode [shoulder] and Taylor Charters [hamstring].
“Taylor has been out on the grass today [Thursday] which was good to see,” he told us. “We were up at Gretna because of the rain so he came up there to do his running out on the pitch.
“It’s good to see him back outside, but we’re still looking at the end of November for him to be back. We need to make sure it’s right with it being a similar injury in the same hamstring, although it isn’t the same injury site. We’ve got to make sure we do it properly with him.
“As it stands at the moment we have 17 outfield players fit to travel. Then there’s a couple of goalkeepers that’ll make the group up. We’ve just got to go with this group we’ve got and hope we get some injured boys back in to reinforce it over the next week or two.”