Bosun Lawal will be assessed for a hamstring injury in another blow to a Stoke City season blighted by lay-offs.
Stoke were missing nine players as they lost 1-0 at Charlton last night, with Ben Gibson having been added to the list due to illness.
Mark Robins has felt the loss of key men sharply, including Viktor Johansson (shoulder), Junior Tchamadeu (knee), Lewis Baker (ankle), Robert Bozenik (shoulder), Sam Gallagher (hamstring) and Divin Mubama (ankle). New signing Ato Ampah is recovering from a toe injury and Gavin Bazunu was ruled out with a thigh problem.
Lawal, who had been filling in at right-back, pulled up as he ran down the wing – just as he had done at Middlesbrough back in September, which ruled him out for two months. Stoke will be hoping the verdict from the medics is not as bad this time.
Robins said: “You’ve got to be fit, you’ve to stay fit. We were without nine players and this makes 10. You can’t do it. It’s an impossibility.
“I’m chopping and changing and it’s my problem – but then it becomes an issue and we’ve just got to keep working our way through it and try to come through this in a way we can learn from it, look back on it and make sure this doesn’t happen again.
“There are too many opportunities we turn down. I’m not talking about injuries because the players we have available are good players. We are at a stage when they are thinking about everything other than what they are thinking about.
“Scoring goals is the most difficult thing to do but it’s easy to score goals if you’re in a good position, if you’re in a position where you run beyond your man and you can drag him and get across him and when the ball comes in you gamble. Things will have a habit of just falling for you and then you can come onto something, have a nice contact on it and stick it in the back of the net.
“It’s the hardest thing but it’s the most rewarding thing. We’ve got to get to that point and we’re not there at the moment.”
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