Town boss Kieran McKenna says striker George Hirst has suffered “a significant hamstring injury” which is “not a very short-term” problem ,but is currently unable to give a precise timescale for his return.
Hirst limped off in the first half of Boxing Day’s 1-1 home draw with his former club Leicester having overstretched as he sought to reach a pass.
"It’s still being assessed, it’s a significant injury to his hamstring,” McKenna said when asked about the injury. "He’s had some scans and he’ll be seeing a specialist to get further clarification on what timescale we’re looking at.
"It’s hard to give too clear an indication [at the moment], it’s not a very short-term injury, we can say that clearly but not beyond that. We should be able to put a timescale on that by next week, he has a specialist appointment early next week and we should be able to give a clear timescale.”
McKenna admits the absence of the striker, who signed permanently in the summer following a loan in the second half of last season, is a significant loss.
"It is, it’s a big blow,” he said. "He’s been very, very important to how we play. He’s developed a lot over the last 12 months and it’s not easy to step into those shoes, but we have strikers here who have done well for us and have been training well and preparing for opportunities when they’ve come and done well in cup competitions.
"We have forwards in the building and, of course, we’re pretty close to a transfer window where we’ll try and add to the squad as well.
"We have some good solutions internally and it’s a window in which teams will all look to improve their squads externally as well.”
With Dane Scarlett having been recalled to parent club Spurs, McKenna was asked whether adding strikers is now his priority once the January transfer window opens.
"There are a few positions we’d like to add in and the forward area is one of them,” he said. "I think always in the second half of the season, every team wants to add goals and goalscorers in the different guises they come in.
"We managed to do that last January and we’d like to add some more goals to the squad again in this window.
"But having said that, we’ve got goals in the building, we’re the top scorers in the league, we’ve shared goals around the pitch, we’ve scored goals from different phases of the game and that’s something that we’ll, of course, look to do independent of who is playing in the central striker role on that day.
"We’re going to look to add more quality and more options in forward area, but probably every team in the Championship is, to be honest, and every team in every league is going want to add more of that in January.
"We’re not alone on that, it’s a challenging window, you can never be sure on availability right until the last day of December as well. You might think that something’s close but availability can change because at this stage of the season a lot of the players you’re looking at are with other teams.
"It’s an important window coming up, but for now, my full 100 per cent focus is on QPR tomorrow night and after that it will turn 100 per cent on Stoke and then after that we don’t have a league game, we’ve got the break with the FA Cup, so that will be the time when I can turn my attention a little bit more [to that].”