United boss Paul Simpson was able to report no new injuries following Tuesday’s game as he gave us his latest general update from the treatment table.
“We took Fin off early on Tuesday night but he’s ok,” he confirmed. “It was just like a dead leg on the cheek of his backside.
“It’s still a little bit sore for him, but he’ll be fine for the weekend, I don’t expect any problems with him at all.
“We’re waiting to see how Alfie McCalmont is. He’s trained today, and we’re hoping he’s another who has no reaction.
“We’ve got just over a day to go before the game, so we’ll just wait and see how they all are when they come back in on Friday morning.”
“The good thing is that Danny Butterworth stepped up well to fill that gap,” he continued. “These lads have got to come in and do a job, and I thought with the system we played on Tuesday night, which I felt was the right system, regardless of the fact that we were a goal down for a long period of it, proved to be the right fit for the players we had available.
“Maybe at Cambridge it’ll be different again, and it might be the case that if Alfie is fit he will come back into it. We’ll have to wait and see.
“There’s a decision to make on Alfie and Dylan McGeouch, but I do have a bit of time on my side before I have to make it.
“I was really pleased with what Dan Butterworth did, but also pleased with the whole team. I thought they all put in a full shift, and if you do that you give yourself a better chance of getting a result.”
Expanding on the current situation with midfielder Dylan McGeouch, he told us: “He’s been in full training again this week.
“It’s difficult because we don’t have regular games that they can play in. He’s certainly fit enough to be taking part in the sessions, and at the moment it’s touch and go whether he’ll be in the squad for the weekend.
“And with Taylor Charters and Paul Huntington, we won’t have either of them for this weekend. They’ve both been out on the grass again, which is good.
“Taylor is still a good few weeks away, we have to tread very carefully with him because of his history with hamstring injuries. We need to make sure we've got him to a good place, so we’re probably still looking at the end of November.
“Hunts has done some running sessions this week and there’s a possibility that he might join in with the full session with us on Friday. It’s a match day minus one so we won’t be doing a lot of work.
“To be honest, Hunts has a job on his hands because I think Sam Lavelle and Jon Mellish have been absolutely outstanding. We’ve still got Ben Barclay who is back and involved with the group, and Corey is in there as well, so it won’t be a guarantee that Hunts will come straight back into it.
“With any player coming back it’s always a case of doing the work then waiting to see what kind of reaction they get to it. Hopefully we won’t see too many negatives and we’ll be ok to continue with them.”
But for defender Jack Ellis, it was some frustrating news following a scan earlier in the week.
“Jack’s hip problem hasn’t settled down,” he told us. “He’s had a couple of occasions where he was showing no symptoms on examination, so we’ve kept trying to build him up and he kept feeling it again.
“We sent him for a scan on Tuesday and it’s come back showing a really small strain on one of his hip flexor muscles, so that’s a case of keeping him off his feet this week and then hopefully by Tuesday or Wednesday next week we can get him back out on the grass and build him up from there.
“Josh Kayode is still with Rotherham, doing the early stages of his rehab, and I know our physio is in contact with their medical department regularly.
“Everything seems to be going to plan, and hopefully we’ll get him fully fit so that he can help us through the second part of the season.”
