Lincoln City head coach Michael Skubala looked ahead to the visit of Fleetwood Town on Saturday, providing a negative injury update and reviewing a positive win at Burton.
The Imps are unbeaten in four games, keeping a clean sheet in three consecutive games. However, they been dealt an injury blow this week.
Injury troubles…
Michael Skubala provided an update to LincSport on Lewis Montsma‘s long-term injury.
He said: “He’s progressing nicely, but slowly. We know that’s a big injury. We’re not sure what his future this season looks like. If he’s going to get back on the pitch, we don’t know yet. It’s too early to tell with Lewis.”
The Dutch centre-back has been sidelined since March with an ACL injury, meaning he has been off the field for the entirety of this season so far.
“He’s a great character, he’s out there everyday trying to build back and trying to get back, but he’s still quite a way off like Tyler is at the moment,” Skubala added.
Speaking to BBC Radio Lincolnshire’s Michael Hortin, Skubala also revealed that Jack Burroughs is set for a period on the treatment table.
He said: “Football changes quickly, we know that. Jack Burroughs came on the pitch at Burton and he’s suffered an ankle injury, so he’ll be out for up to four weeks we think.”
“We need to keep bodies fit, we need to keep everybody competing for places, but we need to keep churning out performances with the mentality to go and get wins,” the head coach added.
Ben House is back:
Ben House returned from his long-term injury on Saturday, coming on in the tight win at Burton Albion.
Skubala said: “It probably turned out to be more minutes than we wanted it to be, but it was a key moment in the game that we needed to make the change and get him on. Probably for his experience more than anything.”
However, House isn’t fully fit. The Imps boss confirmed his minutes still need to be managed ahead of Fleetwood’s visit.
“We’ve had to manage him this week. That’s one of the things we have to get right so we don’t lose him long-term. He’s trained okay this week, but we need to be careful with Ben not to overload him with minutes too early,” he confirmed.
Looking ahead to Fleetwood:
Charlie Adam’s Fleetwood have won two games on the bounce, ending a run of 14 games without a win and lifting them off the foot of the SkyBet League One table.
“You only need to look at Fleetwood’s form in their last couple of games, beating Bristol [Rovers] on Tuesday night and winning 3-0 against Port Vale. They’ve turned a little bit of a corner, it seems like everyone hits form before they come to the LNER,” Skubala said.
He added: “If we perform right and we are competitive and go after them, then hopefully we can exploit their weaknesses as well.”
Skubala is confident ahead of the visit of Charlie Adam’s men, looking to stretch their unbeaten run to five games.
He said: “Everyone’s got their own style in this league. I think if we want to play teams we’ve just got to look at our job and perform well. I’ve said it to the lads and I believe it, that if we play well then we can beat anyone, especially at our home ground.”
“Our structure without the ball has been really good and it’s just creating more chances to score more goals that we need to keep going with, but we’re improving all the time,” the Imps head coach added.
“Happy” with the transfer window:
Lincoln City added the loan signing of 28-year-old former-Imps midfielder Connor McGrandles on deadline day, following Joe Taylor and Jack Moylan in joining the club during the winter transfer window.
On the shape of his squad now the January transfer window has closed, Skubala said: “We’re happy with where we are. More than anything, we just got to try and keep bodies fit.”
He added: “I’m really happy with how the window went and we got our first-choice targets even though Connor took a little bit longer, we knew we always wanted Connor from the start.”
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