Town boss Kieran McKenna hopes to have one player back from illness or injury for New Year’s Day’s trip to Stoke City, while skipper Sam Morsy will return from his one-match ban
During Friday’s 0-0 home draw with QPR, the Blues were without George Hirst, who looks to be out for a while with a hamstring injury, Leif Davis, who has a minor calf problem, and Wes Burns and Nathan Broadhead, who were among a number of players and staff to have picked up an illness, the latter having been sick in the warm-up after being named in the initial XI.
"We’re sort of still in the process of assessing, to be honest,” McKenna told TownTV when asked whether there had been any progress on the fitness and health front.
"We not had too much time since then, we’ve got a training session this morning and we’ll have to see how some players are.
"We certainly won’t have everyone back, we’ll have maybe one from the other night, hopefully.
"We’ll see how they are today. It’s one where we’ll have to take the decision on the morning of the game.”
Asked whether there is anything the club can do to prevent the spread of the illness bug, McKenna added: "We have protocols and since Covid clubs have a lot more familiarity with how to limit the spread of viruses and things like that, so we’ll take as much precaution as we can and travel as separated and spaced as we can and things like that.
"But other than that, just fingers crossed that everyone comes through the next 24 hours healthy and well and we’re ready to go for tomorrow.”
One positive ahead of tomorrow’s match is the return of Morsy, who was suspended for one match for Friday’s match.
Young striker Gerrard Buabo made his league debut as a sub late on in the QPR match but McKenna says the 18-year-old, who has been out with a recurrent hamstring problem, isn’t ready for greater involvement at this stage.
"As I said after the game, it was great to get him on the pitch to see him play,” McKenna said. "But medically he’s not there yet.
"There was a big discussion internally whether he could do five minutes plus extra and that was the maximum, really. He needs to build himself up.
"Is it possible that he could play a similar sort of time as he did the other night over the next couple of weeks? Possibly, but he’s still in the reintegration process from a really big injury and he’s a player we really like so we need to be careful with him.”