Striker James Norwood is back from injury and Josh Harrop from suspension ahead of Saturday’s away game against already-relegated Swindon but manager Paul Cook admits that everyone at Town is counting down the days to the end of the season.
Norwood has missed the last two games after suffering a recurrence of his hamstring problem in the 0-0 draw at Charlton, while Harrop, who is on loan from Preston, has been banned for the last three following his red card at Wimbledon.
"James is back, Josh Harrop’s back,” Cook said at his pre-match press conference. "There’s lads back in the squad.
"Again, at the minute, the training ground’s not a great place to be, as you can imagine, there’s so much negativity in the air and around the place. That’s quite normal.
"We can’t wait for the season to end now as a football club. The reality is that under me, and I’m not speaking about Paul [Lambert] before me or Paul [Hurst] before him, we have underachieved drastically in the last 13 games. Drastically.
"It’s very, very painful at the minute. It’s something I get envious of when I look at other clubs in play-offs etc, and wonder whether I could have done better, should I have done better, could I have made any other decisions that would have helped the players.
"The reality is that we’re in the position that we’re in and it’s something that we must face up to.”
Town are without a goal in 619 minutes of football - they last found the target via the now departed Alan Judge in the 2-1 victory over Bristol Rovers on April 2nd - with the last goal from a striker the Norwood’s at Portsmouth on March 20th.
Asked whether young striker Tyreece Simpson, who found the net in the U23s’ 2-1 victory over Nottingham Forest on Tuesday, might come into his thoughts as he looks to end the drought, Cook said: "One of the problems that I have, being brutally honest with you, because the first team is so ineffective, we look everywhere for help.
"The reality is that our U18s are doing terrifically well, our U23s are doing terrifically well and the first team aren’t very good.
"We’ve got to stop looking [at] younger players who may well not be ready, and Tyreece is doing great by the way, to come up and support the first team.
"We’ve got six mainline strikers at the club. The reality for us is there’s got to be an exit or an in door, you can’t keep chopping and changing and parking problems. The reality for us is going forward our problems will be dealt with before we look for solutions.”