Luton wingback Alfie Doughty has been ruled out of tomorrow’s trip to Middlesbrough in the Championship due to the ankle injury he sustained against Cardiff City on Wednesday night.
The 24-year-old was back in the Town XI in midweek to face a team he once spent a loan spell with, having missed the 1-1 draw against West Bromwich Albion a few days earlier due to a one game ban picked up after receiving five bookings. Having set up Jacob Brown’s winner with his fourth assist of the season just before the hour mark, Doughty then suffered what looked like a serious ankle injury during the six minutes of stoppage time at the end of the game.
Making a block tackle just outside his own penalty area, Doughty then stayed down and required some extensive treatment, as the situation had looked bleak when the stretcher was called for. However, he was able to get up and somehow come back on to hobble through the final seconds of the 1-0 success, but will now be absent when the Hatters make the lengthy trip to the Riverside Stadium for the 12.30pm kick-off.
Giving an update this afternoon, Town manager Rob Edwards, who could choose to put Victor Moses in at left wingback once more, the Premier League winner fulfilling that role at Coventry recently, said: “It will be too soon for this game. Hopefully it’s not too bad, but this one is too soon. We can’t do anything about it now, with the quick turnaround in the games. It’s a bit early to tell at the moment how long it will be, but there’s no chance of this one. He’s had the scan and then he’ll be seeing the specialist, I haven’t had the results of all that stuff yet.
“We’ve certainly got one or two options now that can come in for Alf and of course Vic is one of those. He’s got really good quality and done well, so it does help us, there’s no doubt about that. We’ve also got to look at the opposition’s strengths and what they can do as well and make sure we put the right people in the right positions to deal with them and then how we can go and hurt them?”
Another player who will still be missing is centre half Reece Burke, with his groin injury suffered in the 3-0 win over Watford still not totally cleared up yet. Edwards continued: “He’s progressing well, but Burkey, I don’t think it’s one where we can just drop him straight in as he’s on the cusp so it will be too much of a risk.”
Having made two changes to his team from the 1-1 draw with the Baggies for Wednesday evening, Doughty and Jacob Brown coming in for Victor Moses and Elijah Adebayo, it could well be that Edwards opts to shuffle his pack once more when heading to the north east. Having not done so the last time Town were playing the third game of a three game week, they let a fortunate 2-0 lead slip when losing 3-2 to Coventry, a game they were clearly second best in for the entire 90 minutes, and the boss has learned his lessons from that.
He said: “We’ve built up a bit of a rhythm, so we’ve got to try and get it right. Clearly Alfie’s one who’s going to be forced anyway, so we’ll have to just try and get that right, but learn from the other week when we had the turnaround. This time we’re travelling a bit further as well, so we need to try and make sure that we have that energy and that freshness that can hopefully allow us to play the way we want to.
“We want to try and make a few more passes than we did last time against Coventry when we were away from home as well. We want to try and keep the ball a bit better than the last game, so there’s a few things to think about with that. But coming off the back of a good win, a decent performance as well, there’s a few with a little bit of confidence now so we just want to try and get that balance right.
“There’s a couple who played the other day and a couple who didn’t that we’ll have to give as much time as possible to, so we’ll see. Hopefully everyone’s still available, but it’s still quite fresh (Cardiff game), so some of them are still a bit sore and feeling one or two bits. They’re not injured, but we’ve just got to make sure we’re not breaking them as well. We’re not there yet where everyone’s fully resilient and bulletproof I don’t think at the moment, so there’s still a little bit to think about before tomorrow.
“The game’s going to come quickly as well. We’ll give them as much time as we can and then try and freshen things up in areas that we need to, that we think will be the right way, but it’s not like it’s tomorrow night we’re getting there.”
Although Edwards will be loathe to change a back three who performed so well against the Bluebirds, with Teden Mengi and Amari’i Bell having now played around 100 minutes twice in quick succession following a spell out of action with injury, he might have little choice, saying: “As a team I thought we defended well, it’s not just down to those three (Mark McGuinness too) although they were very good, so it’s good to be able to have a little bit of consistency in that area.
“Whether we’re able to do that going into this game, we’ll see, but we have got defenders who can play in defensive positions which is good. That will help us and we’re going to need that against this team. They’re good players and we have a squad for a reason and now we’ve got a few back as well, we have to try and make the right calls on a couple. So that certainly gives us a little bit more scope to do that as well.”
One player who didn’t feature on the bench against Cardiff City was striker Joe Taylor, who has had a very limited role in terms of minutes this season, his last outing coming in the 2-1 home loss to Sunderland. Asked if there was an injury involved in him missing out, Edwards added: “No, he’s fine, just a decision.”