Grant Ward and Kayden Jackson are over the illness which caused them to miss last Saturday’s 2-0 defeat at Stoke, however, one or two other players have also suffered from the bug this week.
"They’re OK now,” manager Paul Lambert said of Ward and Jackson. "Danny Rowe’s had it, Janoi’s had it, so there’s been a little bug going around but the latter two came in and did a little bit and Wardy and Kayden have got over it.”
Lambert was pleased to hear midfielder Cole Skuse say he is hoping to be back quicker than the expected two months from his knee injury earlier this week.
"That was good news,” he said. "As I said before, it’s a blow because of how well he was playing and what he was doing for us but him coming back will be a big plus.”
Lambert switched his goalkeepers at Stoke last week and was pleased with Dean Gerken’s performance, Bartosz Bialkowski having dropped to the bench following two recent errors.
"He did nothing wrong last week, he never really had a save to make,” the Blues boss said of Gerken. "He was good with the ball, he had no chance with the goals.
"As I said before, I thought Bart just needed a little break, mentally and physically but I expect him to bounce back strongly. Deano at the minute’s in and it’s his turn.
"Bart’s [reacted to being dropped] brilliantly but I don’t expect anything less because of the type of lad he is - a terrific pro and a good guy. I’m pretty sure he’ll bounce back.”
Lambert says he expects his keepers to use their feet more than they were used to previously.
"The way I want to play may be a little bit new to them,” he added. "But as I said to them, any mistakes are my fault because I’m asking them to play that way.
"There’s no pressure on them, no pressure that they have to go and be like Maradona at the back, it’s the way I want to play the game and to be fair to the goalkeepers they’ve handled it really, really well.”
Teddy Bishop, who started the Nottingham Forest match a fortnight ago, then wasn’t involved at Stoke and scored twice for the U23s on Monday, is fine Lambert says, but he says he has to be careful with the 22-year-old given his injury record over the last few seasons.
"He’s OK. The Forest game was his first game [other than the QPR match on Boxing Day last year] in two years from the start.
"That’s absolutely ridiculous. You cannot expect a young kid to go into games of magnitude one after the other when you’ve had two years out. That’s an incredible length of time.
"I think he’s a really good player, as I’ve always said. But I also don’t want him to break down which is important, for himself and we can’t afford for him to break down again, so we have to protect him a little bit.
"But Bish is going to be a good player. He’s got to learn the game without a doubt, he plays a little bit off the cuff because that’s the way he plays but I’ve got to protect him as well.
"One game in two years is an incredibly low ratio, that’s not normal. We threw him in at Forest because, one, I’ve got to see him anyway playing in a big game and how he can handle it, and two, that level after two years out, that’s a big jump for him.”
Lambert says Emyr Huws, who has been out for a year with a knee injury, and Tom Adeyemi, who underwent surgery on the achilles problem he suffered in pre-season, are making progress.
"Huws is doing well, hopefully in the next week he might be with Jim [Henry] the fitness guy. He’s doing well, touch wood he’s been quite good.
"Tom’s still on schedule to start after the new year, so the two of them lads are doing well.”