United boss Paul Simpson indicated last week that he was hopeful that midfielder Jamie Devitt and striker Tobi Sho-Silva would be available for this weekend’s visit to Bradford, but he conformed at his Thursday afternoon press conference that the news this week wasn’t so good.
"We’ve still got a few missing, to be honest, and we’re not taking any chances on Tobi,” he said. “He’s still got some discomfort, and he’s been out on the grass doing a bit of jogging today.
“It’s the first time I’ve seen him on the grass, so I’m just not prepared to risk him. The most important thing now is for Tobi to be fully fit for pre-season.
“He’ll do his rehab, get to a stage where he can have a rest and shut down for a while, and then he can to start to build up again with the off-season programme we’re giving them all to do. Hopefully that will then be him fully ready for the new season.”
“Unfortunately it’s still too early for Dev, so he won’t be involved either,” he added. “That’s a shame because I would really have liked to have got him out there.
“It’s not right for us to do that, it’s as simple as that. He’s still feeling some soreness and he hasn’t been able to do any grass work today, so he’s out.
“He wants to come to the game and support us, so he’ll be there that way.”
“Obviously we’re still without Callum Guy and Joel Senior, but we knew that, and we’ve got a couple of other little niggles from last weekend as well,” he concluded.
“As it stands I’m struggling to fill the bench with players we’ve got unavailable, but we’ll see what happens come the weekend. We’ve still got time so hopefully there’ll be recovery from a couple.
“I’ll fill it with young players if we don’t have the pros fit, but in an ideal world I’ll have the players who’ve been the group over the past 10 weeks or so to be part of it this weekend.
“They’ll need to be assessed nearer the time, and we have some illness in the camp, so we do have some issues.
“It’s not something I’ll lose sleep over because we’re in a fortunate position where we can try things out. If I decide that Jack Ellis needs another run-out then we can do that, and if there’s a situation where we can take a look at another second-year scholar, or even a first-year scholar, if I think there’s an opportunity then what a place it will be for them to go and get experience of first-team football.”
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