Club Physio Danny O’Connor provides an update on the current injury situation of the squad.

“[It’s] not too bad.

“There are a few injuries on a few key players, but all these things are going to happen in football at the end of the day.”

On Reiss McNally…

“Reiss was really frustrating, especially the time of the town again, it happened, got in a foot race at the striker, and the hamstring was gone.

“It was the 93rd minute or something.

“When we’ve watched the footage back, if you look at him, he kind of stumbles and he pulls straight away.

“We scanned him and had a little assessment on Monday, and unfortunately, he had a Grade Three tear on his hamstring.

“We’ve been listening to consultants, and there is no need for surgery, so we’re just working on healing at the moment

“So we’ll start stepping him up properly, hopefully have him running in the next two weeks, then go from there.

“Hopefully, if we put a time on it, hopefully around Christmas, maybe before, that’s what we’re looking at.”

On the loss of Harvey Cartwright…

“Gutted for Harvey.

“He’s had another Grade Three tear on his quad against Carlisle, really, innocuous.

“The sad thing about it is he’s had it before, previously when he was at Hull, and it looks like this has re-aggravated it.

“Obviously, he’s a laon player, Hull are calling him back, he’s gone back to do his rehab rather than drag him all the way up here for me to treat him, he is their player.

“He was at the consultants on Monday and we’re just waiting to see what the decision is with that.

“I don’t know if he needs surgery or anything, but we wish him a massive recovery, because he’s going to go far, that boy.”

On Josh Donaldson’s injuries whilst out on loan…

“Josh pulled up his hamstring during a game.

“He’s overstretched his legs, so he’s planting his leg and then an opposition defender pushed him, overextending his hamstring.

“It’s not too bad, he’s been out the last couple of weeks, and we’re looking to get him running towards the end of this week.

“We’re just building up the strength on there. It’s not too serious, he’ll be back in a couple of weeks, I’d imagine.”

On the match fitness of Vadaine Oliver and Nathan Ferguson…

“The thing that we need to address with Vadaine and Fergie is the time that they came in.

“They’ve both been doing their own thing away from football when they weren’t assigned to a Club.

“You think of a lot of our squad had a six-week pre-season before this, all match fit and game time fed in.

“So we’ve just got to be careful with them, managing the workloads at the moment, getting them back up to match fitness.

On Alex Reid’s recovery… 

Reidy’s done very well, I’ve been running him for the past week.

“When he pulled up, it was interesting as it was just a little tweak more than anything.

“When we watched it back, he gets in a foot race with a Gateshead defender, and you see him feel it, but still sprints.

“I had a look at him, we got him off basically for a precaution, and thankfully it was a great decision to do.

“We did similar with Jay Benn previously in the season –  with Jay, it was a couple of weeks out rather than a couple of months.

“He’s been involved in training today, hopefully at the back end of this week, he’ll go into full training.

“He still needs to do some high-speed sprinting with me, but yeah, he’s he’s coming back.

“We’re hopefully aiming for Sutton, hopefully we can get through this weekend with everything that we’re doing, go back into full training on Monday, and he can get back to scoring goals.”

On hamstring issues…

“We need to address the elephant in the room, we’ve had a few hamstring issues.

“Some of them can be explained, I know Tom Parkes has come off a couple of times and it’s been more cramped, things like that with him.

“It’s just been unfortunate.

“So we made a couple of changes, hopefully we’re addressing that to stop it from happening anymore.

“I mean, injuries are going to happen, this is the nature of the beast, but we’re getting through the same injuries.

“There’s nothing major going on there, it’s just getting it addres,sed and hopefully we’re all alright.”