Football Robins hit by several injury worries after trip to Millwall
BRISTOL City lost four players to injury at Millwall on Wednesday night. Nahki Wells was originally named as a substitute and would have been a useful addition from the bench as the Robins looked for a goal at the Den.
But the Bermudian striker felt a twinge in the warm-up and was replaced in the squad at the last second by Callum O’Dowda, the Republic of Ireland international having returned from injury earlier this month.
The club had officially listed Wells as being part of the matchday 18 until O’Dowda surprisingly came on to the pitch in the 55th minute.
“It was just a passing (drill) at the start of the warm-up. He’s (Wells) just twisted a little bit and felt uncomfortable,” said assistant boss Curtis Fleming, who took charge of City in the absence of Nigel Pearson through Covid.
“It’s one of them where it’s someone that you know you would have loved to throw on tonight. He would have made a huge difference for us, as he has in every game that he’s come on.
“I was disappointed but we can’t take a chance. He could have come on and gone straight off.”
Defender Nathan Baker started the game after taking painkilling injections for a heel injury sustained in the 1-1 draw against Fulham, having gone into last Saturday’s match with a small ankle problem. He was forced off in south-east London after 31 minutes and replaced by Cam Pring.
Left wing-back Jay Dasilva also had to come off with an ankle knock during a first defeat in six games for City.
Fleming added: “We’ve had Jay Dasilva twist his ankle blocking a cross. So we’ve had to change a couple of things. But I said to the guys we can’t feel sorry about that. We’ve got to take the positives that people are stepping up and we had gone five unbeaten.
“We go again and there are 36 games left. We can’t start feeling sorry for ourselves.”
Joe Williams was taken off after 69 minutes - Kasey Palmer replacing him - with the midfielder impressing in his first league start of the season and first since early February, but, somewhat understandably cramped up.
“He’s a character and a month ago he was telling us that he was fit enough. ‘I’ll play and I can play three games in a week’ and I can do this but we’ve had to ease him back,” said the assistant manager.
“I thought he did very well in the game but it just got to him. The game was very end to end at times. He’s one of those guys who would stay on and hurt themselves for us but he had cramp in both hamstrings and we had to make that decision.
“We made more changes than we wanted to do but at the end of the day you’ve got to do them and you have to adapt.”
Fleming insisted it was too early to know if any players would return for tomorrow’s game at Peterborough, with forward Antoine Semenyo (knock) and midfielder HanNoah Massengo (hamstring) also absent from Wednesday’s game at Millwall.