Neal Ardley provided an update on all six of his injured players when he met the media ahead of Tuesday night’s Vanarama National League trip to AFC Fylde.
Alex Lacey (Hip)
"We had a good meeting with Alex this morning – it’s obviously been a little bit frustrating because we're not 100% sure on the issue despite having scans.
"We’ve asked him to join in training and go hard, but every time he’s done it he’s been a bit sore.
"Because of the lack of progress we may look at an anti-inflammatory injection into the area.
"We’re a little bit light in defence so if we can get Alex back it’ll be a massive plus for some of these games we’ve got coming up."
Damien McCrory (Knee)
"Damien ran hard today. He’s got another training session tomorrow and, if he comes through that unscathed, we hope he’ll then be involved in first-team training on Thursday.
"We would then need to assess whether Saturday’s too soon or whether we feel he’s not been missing long enough for that to be a concern.
"It’s a fingers-crossed scenario at the minute."
Ben Turner (Calf)
"Ben’s going to be back on the grass with the team on Thursday, but what we’ve decided with him is to take him away from the conventional idea of getting the hard yards into him first.
"Plodding around the outside of a field doesn’t seem to work for Ben, so we’ll try and get his fitness up through training.
"He’s still a few weeks away but, touch wood, by the time we get to the semi-finals of the Trophy, Ben might have had enough work to be in and around it - but that’s only if everything goes right between now and then."
Regan Booty (Back)
"Regan’s been doing a lot of running with Damien but, because he’s been out for such a long time, we feel he needs to work on the base levels of his fitness for a little bit longer before he can start joining in with the short, sharp stuff in training.
"Again, maybe with a clear run, he may be in contention for the semi-finals."
Sam Slocombe (Thigh)
"Sam was going along nicely but he just started getting a little bit of soreness back in there, so we’ve taken a step back.
"But everything’s telling us we’re on the right track with him. The kicking’s going to be the key thing – he can do most things now but, with him being a goalkeeper, it’s vital he can strike balls.
"We could get him to a certain point and then the last bit might become more difficult."
Zoumana Bakayogo (Groin)
"Zoum’s doing straight-line running and is coming along in line with how we thought he would, but he’ll probably be the last of the outfield players to return."