Paul Simpson has revealed that Josh Emmanuel's absence against Oxford United was down to injury - with the full-back now set for a spell on the sidelines.
Speaking post-match, he said: "Josh is injured. He's out for a couple of weeks with the injury that he picked up at Exeter, so we just have to deal with that one.
"I think Jack Ellis did alright today, I don't have any problems with Jack.
"Fin is not quite ready to go back in. Unfortunately he hasn't quite done enough work in his last two weeks with Forest to get him ready to play, so we're just having to try and build him up a little bit."
Paul Huntington and Dylan McGeouch also missed out on a place in the squad against the U's - with Simpson exmplaining that call.
"Dylan and Hunts are both fully fit, but I just felt there were other options to put on the bench, players who could give us energy," said the United boss.
"I do think that the lads who came off the bench gave us that energy. What we need though, is consistency from the start of games from everybody, because that's not what we're getting.
"The team I selected was to try and give us energy, a consistent level of performance, a consistent mentality. We can't have games where we're really effective and then the next one we're way off it. There's got to be a level of consistency if we're going to get ourselves out of this mess."
United return to action on Tuesday evening against Barnsley, and Simpson isn't expecting to welcome anyone else back into his squad for that game - with Ben Barclay and JJ Kayode still on the recovery trail.
"It might be too early for Ben. He's still got some discomfort," he explained.
"JJ still has a bit of discomfort as well from the little setback he's had.
"I'm not sure what we've had [from the Oxford game]. None of the substitutions were made because of injuries, they were made to try and bring some freshness and changes of shape to try and affect it."