Town boss Kieran McKenna says forward Jaden Philogene isn’t expected to need surgery but is still set to miss the rest of the season, while Omari Hutchinson and Kalvin Phillips will both miss Sunday’s home game against Arsenal, but Liam Delap has trained this week.
Philogene suffered a knee injury moments after coming off the bench during last Sunday’s 2-2 draw at Chelsea and the issue has proved to be as McKenna anticipated after the match.
"He’s seeing a specialist this week,” the Blues boss said. "As we thought, it’s an MCL injury, it doesn’t look like he needs surgery but it’s pretty much definite that he won’t play for us again this season.
"Big disappointment really for us and for him. It’s a challenge for the group in terms that it’s another one in that position and that’s three right wingers, one an MCL, one an ACL [Wes Burns] and one an achilles [Chieo Ogbene].
"But also for Jaden because he arrived later than we all would have wished and it’s really hard, as we spoke about before, to get up momentum and get up to speed.
"But he was working really hard and trying his best at the training ground, so it’s disappointing he won’t get a chance to try and build some of that momentum before the end of the season.
"But no doubt he’ll come back strong, he’s really professional and he’ll do his rehab well and he’ll come back strongly next year.”
Asked if the 23-year-old is likely to be ready for pre-season, McKenna added: "We can’t speak too much on that, the timescales aren’t definite and there’s an international tournament [the European U21 Championship] in the summer as well that he would have liked to have been a part of.
"I don’t think anything’s 100 per cent yet, we can only say it’s very unlikely he’ll play for us but hopefully he’ll be ready in pre-season.”
Hutchinson, a former Arsenal academy youngster, remains out with a hamstring injury sustained in his first training session after returning from international duty with the England U21s at the end of last month.
Phillips suffered an injury in the achilles area in training last week ahead of the visit to Chelsea. McKenna says both remain unavailable.
"Omari, not ready yet, still not fully training with the group, so we have to be careful with that one. Kalvin, not ready and not training with the group,” he said.
Better news is that 12-goal top scorer Delap, who was on the bench at Chelsea due to a rib problem, has been training this week.
"He’s trained, I can’t say he’s absolutely clear yet, but he’s safe to train, so we’ve got some judgements to make going into the weekend.”
Conor Chaplin has been back on the bench for the last few games having suffered a knee problem at the turn of the year and McKenna says the 28-year-old is doing well having come on as an 81st-minute sub in the defeat to Wolves.
"He’s ready, he’s training well,” the Blues manager continued. "With the MCL injuries, they can always linger on a little bit, but he’s training well and he’s an important part of the group.
"Of course, it’s really hard to get up to full speed when you’ve missed that time and you’re in the last throes of a Premier League season, but if anyone’s going to give their full commitment to doing so, it’s Conor. He’s training great and he’s ready to go.”