United’s defensive injury curse struck once again at Walsall on Monday when wing back Jack Ellis pulled up with just 20 minutes on the clock with a hamstring injury.
Manager Paul Simpson said: “I’m annoyed with what’s going on with this now. It’s his other hamstring, as it was with Fin Back, and we’re going to have to have a serious look at it.
“It’s hard for me to say anything at the moment because I’m just not happy about it. For me, the group and for Jack Ellis, it’s really frustrating. We’ll assess it over the next couple of days.
“It’s far too many, I find it really uncomfortable as a group we’re getting so many hamstring injuries. We’re looking to try and work out what it is, there has got to be something.
“Fin Back’s is a little bit different, because we haven’t done the rehab for Fin, we followed it to what Forest said, I don’t really know, but it’s really, really disappointing, for Jack to start with, for the group and for me, and we’re going to have to address it.”
With the back line in particular affected, it’s bound to have an impact on consistency in selection as players go missing from action.
“I’ve tried to do that,” he agreed. “We already know that we won’t have Ben Barclay for the Stockport game [part of the loan agreement], so we’re affected because we’re losing another player there.
“We have to deal with it, get on with it. We’ve got enough in the squad to deal with it, the truth is this is what we’ve got, so we have to go with it. There is enough in there without any doubts, we’ve just got to make sure we perform right.”
On others who might be close to a return, he commented: “There’s no news at the moment, we’ll assess them when we get back in.
“Taylor Charters is still joining in with the group and working, Tobi is just out of the boot, it’s going to be a good few more weeks for him, so possibly not this season. We’ll wait and see.
“With the group we have today, and with JK and Jayden who travelled, and Joel Senior didn’t travel but he’s ok, we’ve certainly got enough to be able to put an 18 out.
“Callum Guy was fine, that was a tactical change. I wanted to try to get Dev on to see if he could find a pass for us. I thought Mox had a little bit more mobility to go in and do that holding role, but it didn’t come off for us on this occasion.”