Town will be without Chris Bart-Williams, John McGreal and Pablo Couñago when they take on Millwall at Portman Road on Saturday. Bart-Williams continues to rest his back, while McGreal has a knee injury and Couñago a strained hamstring.

Both Bart-Williams and McGreal are likely to be available next week.Couñago is having a scan today which Town expect to show that he will be out for two to three weeks. Long-term absentee Chris Makin sees a specialist tomorrow regarding his still troublesome hip.

Better news is that skipper Jim Magilton is fine, after picking up a minor foot injury against Norwich at Carrow Road on Sunday.

The absence of three first team regulars means that the Town squad is more than usually stretched with Scott Mitchell, Scott Barron and Dean Bowditch all involved in first team training late this week. Manager Joe Royle says that two of those three will be in his 16 facing the Lions.

Millwall's visit means a return to Portman Road for on loan keeper Andy Marshall. The stopper will be allowed to play against Town, something Royle says was down to finance: “It's something we preferably would have avoided, but they're paying a substantial amount of his wages and we couldn't really enforce anything with this deal.

“Andy's a good keeper, he's just had a bad time here. It just hasn't worked for him here, which sometimes happens, but I believe he's doing exceptionally well at Millwall.

“He'll be keen to do well here, to show people what he can do — myself included. Let's hope he doesn't come back to haunt us.”

Royle feels his side have played well without reward recently: “We need a break. We've played exceptionally well in two games last week and came away with nothing.

“I can't even say that we've defended badly apart from one or two individual errors. I thought we defended very well at Norwich, there were few problems at all until we went down to 10 men.

“I would settle for a repeat performance that we had at Norwich but with one or two more breaks around both goals; thinner crossbars and a bit tighter marking at corners and freekicks.”

The Town boss is not expecting the prospect of a potential FA Cup final to affect Dennis Wise's men: “I've been in that situation with Oldham when we were going for the FA Cup and the League Cup, as well as promotion.

“There're running high on adrenaline and they won't be training. I don't think that will be too much of a problem to them and they're in the top six. They got in the top six without playing a game this week, so they'll be thinking the luck's in for them at the moment.

“They're doing well. I predicted at the beginning of the season that they'd be up there. They've got a good blend of youth, some good players, they got strength and they've bought Dichio who's been a good signing for them. I'm not surprised by Millwall.”

The Lions have doubts over central defender Darren Ward and player/manager Dennis wise. Ward has a medial ligament injury and Wise took a blow to the knee during last week's FA Cup match with Tranmere.

Saturday's referee is Premiership official Mike Riley from Leeds. He was last at Portman Road in January when he took control of Town's FA Cup loss to Sunderland.

Squad: Davis, Price, Wilnis, Richards, Santos, Diallo, Naylor, Magilton, Miller, Wright, Westlake, Reuser, Bent and Kuqi, plus two from: Mitchell, Barron and Bowditch.

Photo: Action Images

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