Gillingham winger Aaron Rowe will almost certainly miss the trip to his old side Crewe on Saturday.
Rowe played 47 games on loan for Crewe last season to help them reach the League 2 play-off final but joined the Gills in the summer from Huddersfield.
He was looking forward to having a similar impact for Gillingham this season but hasn’t played since the end of August because of a hamstring injury.
Gills boss Mark Bonner expects the likes of Josh Andrews and Conor Masterson to be back pushing for a first-team place soon but Rowe could be missing for a couple more weeks.
Bonner said: “Because of a hamstring injury that was going to take a bit of time. I also don’t want to force it, to be longer than maybe it could be.
“Sprinters and hamstrings can be a bad combination and we definitely don’t want that to be a repeat.
“He’s doing every other day probably on the grass at the moment with (fitness coach James Russell) and hopefully we can drip him into some sort of training next week at some point, but we’ll need a good couple of weeks, two or three probably before we consider it.
“We want to really build up some training load and robustness so that he doesn’t break and it’s probably the approach we’re taking with a couple.
“We’ve got a good squad available. We don’t need to force things too early in the season. We shouldn’t because that will just bite us and after a spell at the beginning where we had a lot of players unavailable for different periods, we’re starting to get the other side of that hopefully. He’ll be a little bit longer.”
Bradley Dack could be available this week after a full week of training and Remeao Hutton isn’t expected to be missing for long, having sat out Tuesday’s game as a precaution.
Bonner’s likely to give Hutton until tomorrow (Friday) morning to see if he can make the trip north. He had a twinge to his hamstring before the Grimsby game and wasn’t risked.
Centre-half Masterson and striker Andrews trained with the first-team squad on Thursday.
Bonner said: “Conor’s been on the grass Monday, Tuesday, Thursday of this week, which is really good. Josh the same.
“Again, they both need time really. They’re not in full training yet. We think they might be at some point next week.
“They’ve missed quite a while so they’ll take a little bit of time to get ready but we’re seeing the end of the tunnel in that one.
“Conor had a problem with his heel, which is healing, and nearly better. I could pretend to give you the scientific term but I’ll get it wrong. Hopefully, he’s close.”
Gillingham have a Kent Senior Cup game on Tuesday at Ebbsfleet United but Bonner’s not expected to play any of his senior first-team players.
