Gray has another four week wait

Manager Steve Cotterill was pleased to hear his leading scorer was on the mend but disappointed not to be getting him back sooner. “It's positive to know the boot is off,” Cotterill said, adding: “Within four weeks we would perhaps have wanted him playing, so one outweighs the other at the moment. I was hoping to get Andy back in January, but these injuries don't clear up overnight and we are not going to have him on Saturday, or a week on Saturday or the Saturday after that, and we just have to deal with that.

Gray had been hoping for better news after spending a lot of his time recently in an oxygen chamber in Leeds, hoping to speed up the healing process. He said: “I go into the oxygen chamber for about an hour and forty minutes, five days a week. It is the first time I've been in one and I go to one in Leeds which is a centre for people with multiple sclerosis, and it is supposed to help them.

“Every day I sit there with an oxygen mask on and read, there's not a great deal else I can do in there. I just hope it is doing some good.”

Just when Andy is back in action isn't known but it looks as though it is going to be February now before he is able to resume training, and that will mean missing at least another five league games plus potentially two cup ties.