Manager Paul Cox will assess the fitness of both Lee Stevenson and Lee Beevers, after the duo were substituted as a precautionary measure in Saturday’s 5-4 loss at Fleetwood Town.
Beevers was replaced by James Jennings on the hour-mark at Highbury, before Stevenson was taken off with an ankle problem, just seven minutes later.
“Stevo’ took a knock and went over on his ankle. We’ll know more later this morning,” said our boss.
“Beevs’ wasn’t feeling too well at half-time, so we gave him five or 10 minutes to see if he was feeling any better, but we had to take him off.
“We’ll assess those two today and see where we go from that, but if it’s not illness or injuries, sometimes we’re giving ourselves a mountain to climb.”
Cox continued: “What I mean by that is we’ve had four defeats on the trot now and in two of those games, we’ve played with 10 men for long periods.
“Then, on Saturday, we gave ourselves a mountain to climb by conceding a sloppy goal after about a minute.
“We worked extremely hard [to get back in the game], played some great stuff and scored some great goals, but then gave the game away.
“What I want to do is get the boys re-focussed, and then I’ll make any decisions if they need to be made, in terms of personnel.”
Reflecting further on Saturday’s extraordinary encounter, our boss added: “There were some excellent individual performances.
“Chris Clements, Ollie Palmer, Sam Clucas and Junior Daniel were all on a different level and I feel a bit gutted for some of the players, because I don’t think that they deserved to be on the losing side.
“The main thing now is about getting the boys focussed again and back on their feet, but little things are hurting us at the minute.
“We can’t give teams goals advantage or a man advantage consistently, and hope to win a football match.”
Meanwhile, our boss also confirmed that youngster James Alabi is unlikely to stay with us, now his month-long loan from Stoke City has expired.
“I don’t think we’re going to be taking it any further,” said Cox. “I was with the chairman yesterday and we spoke about it, but we’ve also got the emergence of Ollie Palmer.
“Anyone who saw him on Saturday will know that he was a real handful against potentially one of the best centre-back partnerships at this level.
“It was a tough decision, but what I don’t want to do is bring people in from other football clubs, when I’ve got players here who I think are going to get better and be a part of this football club for a long time.”
Paul Cox’s full pre-match press conference ahead of tomorrow night’s trip to Burton Albion will be available on Stags Player later today. To subscribe, click here.
