Gillingham striker Josh Andrews could feature for the first time this weekend at Morecambe.
Head coach Stephen Clemence revealed today (Thursday) that the 22-year-old could be in the matchday squad after progressing well with his injury rehab in the past few days.
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Since his move from Birmingham City on February 1, Andrews hasn’t featured after picking up a muscle strain on his comeback from a hip injury, which he sustained while playing on loan at Accrington Stanley in early December.
The Gills badly need goals and points with seven games left and Clemence will be relishing the chance to include his big striker at the weekend. It’s expected he’d feature on the bench initially.
“Josh Andrews is in contention,” the manager confirmed.
“He has trained all week, he is getting assessed every day, so we will see.
“It has been a big blow for me, we signed three strikers in January and two of them I haven’t seen play much at all. They have been big misses for the squad.”
It’s been a much better week on the Gills training ground, a week on from a sickness bug that went through the squad, leaving up to nine missing.
All but one of those players – who Clemence declined to name – are now back training although many have come back in less than perfect condition.
Clemence said: “There have been more players to train and it has been nice to have a full week with them. We’ve managed to do some good work with them.
“The start of the week we were assessing where they were at, because one or two had lost quite a bit of weight and had only just started eating again, but we are in a lot better place than we were last weekend.”
Defender Conor Masterson is back from suspension which gives Clemence something to consider.
He could stick with a four-man defence, which seems likely after a positive performance last time out, but that would mean a choice of two centre-halves from the returning Masterson, Max Ehmer and Shad Ogie.
He could, however, revert to the wing-back setup and include all three, but that would appear a backward step after looking more useful going forward in recent games.
Clemence said: “I have got three very good central defenders and if we play a back four, that doesn’t fit in, but that’s a good problem to have.
“Conor has also been our top goal scorer but I thought the team played really well in the last game.
“We will have to see what happens. We haven’t decided yet whether it’s a back four or a back three, but we will finalise those details on Friday and go to work with that.”
Ethan Coleman returns to the squad after being one of those to miss out with illness last week, giving Clemence another choice in midfield after Tim Dieng and Robbie McKenzie played well in the middle of the park against Grimsby.
Dom Jefferies, meanwhile, is still on track to be back available in early April, possibly for the game at Bradford City on the 6th.
