First-team coach Gary Roberts met with the media on Friday morning, ahead of the trip to Newport County in South Wales on Saturday afternoon.
Firstly, he provided updates on the fitness of Dilan Markanday and Armando Dobra, saying: “Dilan has been really good and had a good week’s training. Nice to have him back. He’s such a big part of the group, you might see him as a bit of a quiet lad, but he’s a big part of the changing room – really funny boy.
“It’s nice to have his personality and obviously his skillset in and around the group again. He’s trained all week, so that’s a positive for us.
“Armando Dobra is coming up to 13 weeks out, which is a long time in football. (He is) such a big player for this club, since the day he walked through the door, he’s been a big part of what we’re trying to do and it’s nice to see his face back on the pitch again.
“They’ll (both) be up for a selection but, as I say, there are some good players in those positions at the minute and it’ll be down to the manager to pick if they’re ready, if they’re fit enough and if they merit getting a place on the bench. At the minute we’ve got some good players at the club who’ve been working hard for a long time while these two players have been injured, so it’s going to be a tough decision.”
Roberts then commented on Luke Butterfield’s loan move to Accrington Stanley.
“I think it’s really important for Luke to play football,” he said. “He had a little setback in the season which kept him on for a couple of months and then he’s come back and he’s desperate to play first-team football.
“At the minute, we just couldn’t get him minutes here with the four lads in the middle of the pitch, so the best thing to do is go to Accrington where he will get minutes for a team who he’ll learn a lot from.
“Obviously he’s new to the professional game, he’s been in the U21s system at Everton for a long time and now he needs to go and take that next step into proper league football, get some appearances under his belt and it’ll do him the world of good if he can get some games there.”
Lastly, looking at Newport County, he said: “It’s a tricky game. The team were fighting and scrapping. I was on the way home last week and on 90 minutes they were out of the bottom two, but they concede the two late goals at Gillingham and they’re back down the bottom.
“They were nearly out of it, which would have given them a big injection, but everyone is where they are in the league for a reason and we’ve got to go there, look after ourselves, step on and if we want to be up the league, we’ve got to start winning games, and it starts tomorrow.”
