United boss Chris Beech confirmed at his Thursday morning press conference that the injury to Josh Kayode is not as bad as first feared, following his first half substitution at Morecambe 10-days ago.
“JJ definitely won’t be involved on Saturday because of that tackle,” he said. “It could have been a lot worse. It was a season-ending type tackle but the news was very good from a scan, so we’ll just see how he goes day-by-day.
“Obviously he’s a miss, he’s been playing well, and every player has different attributes. You have to make sure your team represents cohesion along with individual attributes within it.
“There are always changes to be made, even if there are some players exactly the same, there can be difference within it that sometimes people don’t see.
“There are always chinks in what you are trying to achieve, but sometimes, like the other day, it might be several players changing in the starting line-up, sometimes it might be the same players but things have changed within that.”
“I’m hopeful that Aaron Hayden will be ok but, again, we just have to wait and see,” he continued. “With Danny Devine, he’s going well and I think he will train either today or tomorrow.
"He’s not actually trained competitively yet, we’ll have to ses how he goes over the next few days. It’s not a groin strain, it was an operation type thing, so he was always going to be a good three months.
"We have to make sure we give him some time back into it before we put him back out there. This kind of thing needs a reserve game and we were meant to have one yesterday, but it got cancelled with the weather.
"We’ll seek some form of game somewhere to make sure people like Danny and others can get that Carlisle kit on and get ready to get back in that first team.
“Morgan Feeney is also coming on well, but he’s still a few weeks away.”
