United defender Peter Murphy received a blow to his recovery schedule when a surgeon today confirmed that there is damage to his medial ligament.

John Ward explained: "Peter Murphy has been in with the specialist this afternoon and he has confirmed that there is slightly more medial ligament damage than the scan had otherwise shown us."

"He has advised us that we are looking at a minimum of two weeks before he will be back to full training," he added, "so we have been told to slow down his work at the moment and pick things up again as next week moves on. We did think, following that scan, that we were going to be able to push things on quickly, but Dolly spotted that something wasn't quite right almost immediately. His experience with this type of injury caused us to seek further advice, and that has meant that we have been able to identify that there is a problem to be dealt with."

"As I have said before," he concluded, "this is exactly when the squad comes in to play. We've already seen Richard Keogh come in, and Josh Gowling is playing well in the Reserve side, so there is now real competition for the place. That's why these lads are here, to cover these situations for us."