|
Both Mo Camara and Luke Chadwick, both ever presents this season, are rated doubtful with flu symptoms and Chadwick was in bed ill yesterday. The suggestions are that neither will travel and a club source did tell us yesterday that they are expecting only thirteen players to be on the coach that leaves Burnley at lunchtime today.
Trying to decide on who will and who won’t play is not much easier than trying to find some winning lottery numbers but with both Todd and May out it certainly leaves us without a recognised central defender in the squad with Graham Branch and Lee Roche expected to play there.
Stan admitted defeat yesterday regarding his plans to strengthen with a loan signing and although he is on immediate recall there seems to have been no move to bring Arthur Gnohere back from Queens Park Rangers.
There is no doubt there has to be a lot of sympathy for Stan when, as manager of a First Division Club, he is in a situation where he finds he cannot fill the subs bench although I don’t necessarily agree with his comment yesterday that it would be unfair to include youngsters on the bench who in any case should earn their place.
But it isn’t sympathy he wants, it is help. And I find it staggering that we could be down to two substitutes whilst playing at this level of English football. This is what it used to be like at the level I played football when for one reason or another some of the players couldn’t make it. But that was Sunday parks football and not the Nationwide League Division One.
We are being embarrassed, we are being laughed at, and it is to be honest hardly a surprise.
Without trying to make any effort to second guess Stan’s mind and name a starting eleven I’ll just name the squad of thirteen I expect to travel which is:
Brian Jensen, Lee Roche, Paul Weller, Graham Branch, Robbie Blake, Ian Moore, Tony Grant, Dean West, Gareth Farrelly, Delroy Facey, Richard Chaplow, Matt O’Neill and Joel Pilkington.
Ipswich too have injury problems and Darren Bent is also out of the side as well as Driss Diallo whilst former Sheffield United and Grimsby defender George Santos is rated doubtful.
Joe Royle has named a seventeen man squad for the game and that is:
Kelvin Davis, Fabian Wilnis, Richard Naylor, George Santos, Matthew Richards, Jermaine Wright, Chris Bart-Williams, Jim Magilton, Alan Mahon, Scott Mitchell, Pablo Counago, Shefki Kuqi, Alun Armstrong, Dean Bowditch, Ian Westlake, Gerard Nash, Lewis Price.