Blues manager Paul Cook says he’s been left with little choice but to play Scott Fraser in wide roles given the fitness situation at the club in the opening weeks of the season.
When Fraser joined the Blues in the summer, most fans anticipated the Scot to playing in the number 10 role he usually occupied when he was with tomorrow's opponents the MK Dons last season.
However, so far the 26-year-old has operated on the left and the right with Cook having picked a second striker - Louie Barry at Burton and Macauley Bonne at Cheltenham - in addition to Joe Pigott, who has started all three league games, rather than an out-and-out number 10.
Asked what he believes Fraser’s best position is, Cook said: "If you look at preferred formations, I’ve always been 4-2-3-1. If you look at the fact of Wes Burns being out injured, Sone Aluko’s been out injured, Kyle Edwards hasn’t been fit, the reality is that I’ve had no choices in the decisions I’m making unfortunately.
"If Scott doesn’t play wide, the reality is, we haven’t got, since Conor Chaplin got injured, a number 10. We haven’t had Wes Burns and Sone Aluko and Kyle Edwards wasn’t in the building, so we’ve had no choice with some of our selections.
"It’s like I say to everyone. It’s not me appealing for time, I’m not that type of person, I’m not that type of manager. I just want to get to a point where we’ve got everyone fit and available and we can put formations of players in squads that we probably brought them in to play. But unfortunately we haven’t been able to do that yet.”
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Quizzed on whether he can field central midfield trio Lee Evans, Rekeem Harper and his 16th signing of the summer Tom Carroll in the same team, Cook added: "It’s just football debates. Games have taken certain formats. If you’d asked me on 60 minutes would we lose at Cheltenham, I couldn’t see it happening.
"We were then looking at making substitutes to keep control of the game and score more goals, we want to score more goals.
"Unfortunately for us, Cheltenham defended very well, very deep in large numbers and caught us out with sucker punches that are very, very hard to deal with. Long throws underneath your bar. It’s tough and not as easy as people think.
"For us, we just go away, we lick our wounds, we work harder and we come back better. That’ll always happen under me at this club.”