Abbott on the injured players
Manager Greg Abbott gave us an update on the injury situation on Friday afternoon.
He said: “At the moment, as well as the ones we already know about, we have no Paul Thirlwell and no Matt Robson. As well as that, there are doubts about Chris Chantler and Peter Murphy. Chantler and Murphy have trained for the first time today so we’re hopeful they’ll wake up tomorrow with no lingering doubts.
“We’ll make decisions on Murphy and Chantler in the morning. If they tell me they’re pain free after the work they’ve had today then we’ll go with it.”
“It’s been tough,” he added. “We thought we’d cracked it because we were sitting here this time last week thinking we were getting McGovern and Loy back into training, and we were just waiting for Lee Miller.
“Matt [Robson] has been down to see a specialist in Leicester and we will probably get the results of that by Monday or Tuesday. There is a concern but Dolly [Neil Dalton] doesn’t think it’s anywhere near as damaging as last season’s back injury.
“He gives us pace and power down the left side and his link up play with Chris [Chantler] has been one of the better features of the football we’ve produced over the past few weeks, so we’re really hopeful he’ll be ready for next weekend at the latest.”
“With Paul [Thirlwell] we’re hopeful he’ll be ready for next weekend as well, but that still could mean him missing another two important games with Preston and Brentford away coming up,” he continued.
“With the other two, JP [McGovern] has looked really good in training but Rory Loy has got a lot to do because he’s obviously missed a lot of football. JP hasn’t missed as much so there’s a chance he could be involved at some point tomorrow ... possibly from the bench. He’s looked really sharp, he’ll want to play and for the first time this season he’ll be playing with no pain in his groin from the hernia.”
