MANAGER: It puts pressure on everybody

The weekend travelling group of 19 was reduced to 18 on Friday morning when defender Jack Ellis pulled out of the pre-trip training session.

Manager Paul Simpson said: “He’s not ok and I’m annoyed with it, to be honest with you.

“He’s going to have to learn how to understand his body a bit better because he hasn’t told us anything about his hamstring until Friday morning when he had to pull out of training.

“He’s had a scan, it’s a grade two, so he could be out for about four weeks. I am annoyed with the way that’s been dealt with, he has got to learn that we have to be told that if he feels he has issues.

“He trained Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, and if he’d said something we probably wouldn’t be sitting in this position where we’ll be without him for four weeks now.”

“It puts pressure on everybody because we’re down to 16 outfield players,” he continued. “The only other option we have available is Gabe Breeze as our third keeper.

“We need to make sure we all stay right and that was my thinking with changes I made in the second half. It’s to try to make sure everybody stays fit and available to go into next week’s game.”

“Jack trained all week, Monday Tuesday Thursday, then on Friday dropped out of training after I’d named the team,” he continued to explain. “We sent him for a scan just to try and be sure, and it showed that he’s got a grade two strain.

“I’m really disappointed with how that’s been handled, not by the medical department, I’m disappointed with Jack, because he hasn’t told us the full story, and he’s a young player, and this is a massive learning curve.

“He has to learn that he has to keep us informed. I honestly think if he’d been honest with us in the first part of the week, we wouldn’t be missing him for four weeks, chances are he’d have been ok for today or next week. He’s going to have to learn from this, and he’s going to have to have a conversation with me on Monday about that.”

On whether it’s a case of a young player showing that he wants to be involved, he told us: “It seems that’s the case. I don’t know what it is but he’s absent now for a good few weeks, which is annoying, and we haven’t got enough bodies to take chances like that.

“We have 16 outfield players fit, hopefully over the next week or two we might start to get others back into it, and we just have to make sure we keep everybody right over the next week.

“We’ll get everybody freshened up and ready to go again. I don’t know what’s going to happen for next week yet, we just have to wait and see.

“This weekend was about focusing on the 18 players who travelled with us, making sure they were right for the game and went about it properly. Now we can address the other situation and come next weekend we’ll know what we’ve got.”

Read Time: 3 mins