Speaking exclusively with 1866+, first-team coach Gary Roberts gave his thoughts ahead of Tuesday evening’s away fixture against Cambridge United.
Firstly discussing the extent of Dilan Markanday’s injury, he said: “He’s got a scan today (Monday), so we’ll know the extent after that. The Initial thoughts are that it’s his hamstring.
“He didn’t present very well, but I think it’s settled down a little bit today and hopefully, fingers crossed, we get the best news from the scan and it’s only a low grade injury.
“Hopefully it’s a grade one or grade two injury where it’s going to be weeks instead of months.”
With both Markanday and Armando Dobra likely to be absent for the Cambridge fixture, Roberts spoke about the depth within the squad.
“In key positions, we just can’t get everyone in the squad at the same time,” he said. “We were missing Dobra and now Markanday. We’ve missed Will Grigg too, which left Lee Bonis a little bit isolated with just himself and young Will Dickson.
“We’ve got three centre-halves fit. We had four but we’ve lost ‘JD’ (to injury). But, we’ve got Ryan Stirk, ‘Griggy’ and Luke Butterfield back which is good, and hopefully there’ll be some good news with Markanday.”
Focusing on Cambridge’s threats, the first-team coach said: “Everyone’s at this level for a reason. They’re probably one of the favourites to go up, especially with a really experienced coach from a higher level.
“At the minute we feel that, in our last two performances against Swindon and the Doncaster, we’ve been quite consistent and good.
“We’ve been really in both games and could have got different results in both of them, so we’ll be going there confident.”
Finally praising the support of the fans, he added: “They were top class on Saturday when we needed them. They stuck with the players all along, and I think the players definitely appreciated it and the fans appreciated how much effort the players put in.
“They give everything for this club, our players. We might perform badly from time to time, but they’re never, ever, short of work rate and endeavour to play for this club. It’s going to be a really physical game. We have to roll our sleeves up and we’ll need our fans.”
Watch the full interview here.
