Town boss Adam Lakeland says the club will be doing everything they can to sign another centre-half before Saturday’s home game with Yeovil.
Of The Shaymen’s six contracted centre-backs, only one – Adam Adetoro – is currently in contention, with Shaun Hobson, Will Smith, Jo Cummings and Jevon Mills injured and Charlie Hayes-Green unavailable.
Midfielder Josh Hmami has deputised impressively at the back in the last two games but Lakeland is keen to add to his options in the position before this weekend.
“Josh Hmami’s been absolutely unbelievable at centre-back,” Lakeland said.
“I know the game (at Scunthorpe) changed drastically when they had a man sent-off but I felt he started the game really well anyway, and he played really well there on Saturday.
“But yo do lose him higher up the pitch, so we need to bring a centre-half in.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean, if we do bring one in, that they’ll come in and play because we know Josh can play there for us.
“But we do need one. We’ll be doing everything we can this week to try and get a centre-half in.
“It’s likely to be a loan and initially, probably just for a month.
“Outside of that, there’s nothing imminent but we are always looking.
“But we are probably at a point now where we do need players to go out to enable us to bring in, and that’s not proving so straightforward.”
Lakeland has been impressed by Adetoro and says he reacted in the right way to losing his place in the side.
“He’s played really well in the last two games and fair play to him, because I left him out after the Braintree game, I felt he deserved to be left out,” said the Town boss.
“He came on at Boston and did well, he played really well on Saturday in the main and he’s had another assured game (on Monday), and that’s what I want to see, that consistent performance level, not just from him but from all the players.”
Hobson, who injured his hamstring against Forest Green Rovers, won’t be available this weekend but could be back in a couple of weeks.
“It’s not a bad one. It’s grade one, so you’re probably looking at two to four weeks,” Lakeland said.
“Being an optimist and speaking with Shaun and Aaron (Scholes), I think it could be on the bottom side of that, but you also don’t want to reintroduce him too quick and too eagerly because, if it’s not fully healed, then it goes and it’s a grade two or worse.
“So it’s not horrendous but he’s still going to be missing for a few games.”
Lakeland said Hayes-Green will be unavailable for at least the next couple of weeks but full-back Dylan Crowe could return to contention this weekend.
“Just not quite right,” Lakeland said on his absence from the squad on Monday. “He trained on Friday and was on the bench on Saturday.
“It’s still just niggling him a little bit when he’s doing certain actions, which is why we didn’t utilise him off the bench on Saturday, he just felt it in the half-time warm-up, and why he wasn’t involved (at Scunthorpe).
“He might have a chance for Saturday.
“It’s probably on me, that one, probably because of the lack of options, just trying to get him back in the fray maybe a bit too eagerly when we might have been better disregarding the weekend completely and getting him back into training.”
Striker Will Harris is available for Town after serving his three-game suspension.
Leave a Reply