How long are your defenders out for?
Hellberg understandably keeps his cards close to his chest on that one, so a lot of it is speculation.
We have 4 out and out CBs of high standard at the club.
Lenihan - Already crocked for most if not all of the season after playing a couple of games in pre-season. A good CB when fit, he's been injured for over 2 seasons now, aside from the odd return.
Jones - Went off with an ankle injury yesterday , full details unknown, but knowing our form with them unlikely to return until partway through January.
Edmundson - Reoccurance of a hip problem yesterday that kept him sidelined for a couple of months last time.
The only "fit" one of our official CBs is Dael Fry. Just returned from a few months out with a persisitent recurring calf injury, ideally wouldn't have played a whole half yesterday, but had no choice.
In addition, as we prioritised multi-role players after our last 2 years injury hell, Luke Ayling can and often will deputise as a CB, though it leaves us with no real cover for Britain at RB if he gets injured.
Target at LB can deputise in the centre too. Injured yesterday though which rules him out as well. Not sure how long for. Essentially we're down to just the one good quality LB in a recently returned from a long injury layoff Bangura before we have to make an at best average replacement.
At a pinch a recently recovered from injury Browne is another multi-roled player that can drop back into a CB position from being a DM. The only problem there is that Aiden Morris, our other quality DM, has been broken for a few months now too, so we can't really pull Browne from that role.
If it wasn't for learning from the past 2 seasons that anything that can go wrong WILL go wrong regarding injuries and recruiting quite a few multi-roled players accordingly, we'd have been completely screwed this year, the same as the last couple of seasons. Since this whole injury nightmare started a few games before the end of the 22/23 season when we faced you in the playoffs tbh, which is barmy.