Wanderers are down to the bare bones for their Vertu Trophy quarter-final against Wrexham tomorrow night, with injuries and sanctions reducing Steven Schumacher’s team.
After losing Aaron Collins and Kion Etete to injuries before their dramatic encounter against Crawley, the Whites may have only 15 healthy senior outfield players.
Though George Thomason is able to participate and will serve the final game of his ban this weekend, Szabi Schon has had two bookings in the competition and is out.
Kyle Dempsey, Ricardo Santos, and Carlos Mendes Gomes are all injured.
Aaron Morley and Alex Murphy are both cup-tied after representing Wycombe and Newcastle United Under-21s previously in the competition.
Wanderers submitted their squad list to the EFL last week, which included 21 senior outfield players, and they have the option of calling up B Team players like as Luke Matheson and Sam Inwood to help raise numbers.
Schumacher stated that leading scorer Collins sustained an injury late last week in training, making him unlikely to play.
“He had a bang on his hip after running into Nathan Baxter in training,” he told me. “It is in his oblique, which can be very unpleasant.
“He wasn’t moving well on Friday, so he wasn’t clearly available (for Crawley). And he is still not moving very well today, but he claims things have improved significantly.
“When he coughs or laughs, it’s less painful. But we’re hopeful that in a few days, things will calm down and he’ll be able to resume his normal activities.
“We all understand how essential he is, so we can’t rush him if he doesn’t feel well. We’ll just have to wait and see how he is.”
New loan signature. Etete was supposed to be on the bench against Crawley, however he left the warm-up due to thigh injury.
“He said he tried to pass a ball and just felt his left thigh tighten up, so we don’t know the extent of that,” Schumacher told reporters. “But we’ll have to get him scanned because with muscle injuries we can’t really take any risks.”
Wanderers will face Peterborough United at home if they can go past Wrexham in their first visit to the Racecourse Ground since May 1988, when they won promotion.
Schumacher, who was Plymouth’s manager when Bolton defeated Argyle 4-0 in the 2023 final, has a special motive to triumph.
“I’m desperate to get back to Wembley because they spoilt it for me last time I was there,” he said.
“I don’t care how we win—90 minutes, penalties, anything. I just want to make sure we get to the semi-finals.”
Schumacher took charge of his first home game on Saturday, which was a raucous affair with seven second-half goals.
And the new head coach was impressed by the ruckus made by the gathering of almost 20,000 people who had gathered to welcome him.
“I thought the atmosphere was great,” he said. I was excited in the build-up and looking forward to the game , and it didn’t disappoint.
“Today has been a good day. I know there are aspects of the game and performance that we would have done differently or preferred differently, but we won and all of our fans went home happy, so that is all that matters.”
