Manager Simon Grayson spoke to PNE Player after his side’s goalless draw at home to Cardiff City and revealed a number of injury concerns.
The North End boss lost skipper Tom Clarke during the second half and told the official online TV channel that the No.5 had suffered a shoulder injury, whilst Chris Humphrey – who missed the game – could be set for a long period on the sidelines.
“Tom has done something to his shoulder and with the quick turnaround for Tuesday night we will have to see where we are with that,” said the gaffer. “Having lost Paddy McCarthy a couple of weeks ago and Paul Huntington is just not quite ready yet, centre half is a position we are down to the bare bones.
“We have also lost Chris Humphrey for a period as well. He has seen a specialist about an injury that he has been playing through and it has revealed he has a stress fracture and will be out for two months, so it is disappointing news.
“These things happen, so we dig keep and keep on building. The good thing about today is that we kept a clean sheet and we got another point and that is a positive.”
The game was a quiet one in the first half, but after the break both sides had chances to take the win: “There were plenty of incidents, plenty of goalmouth action, with opportunities at both end in the second half,” continued the PNE boss.
“There wasn’t much in the game in the first half; we lacked a little bit of quality, but our players are always going to give you the work-rate, the desire and the commitment, we just lacked that little bit of quality that probably comes with getting a few more results, which will bring a bit more belief in the players.
“In the second half we had players going off injured and players going down with cramp, but we kept going right until the end and you just felt that we might have nicked something. Both sides had shouts for penalties, but the second half was an end to end game with chances for both teams.”
There were also strong shouts for penalties for both sides, probably two-one in favour of North End, although match official Stuart Atwell didn’t see any of them as spot kicks.
“Stevie May got the other side of Morrison and they could have had a penalty to, but you have to be proud of the players for how hard they worked; they put the bodies on the line when we were losing players through injury and we just need to dig deep.
“We made blocks and we also kept pushing forward to try and get opportunities which we might have finished.
“You saw DJ near the end in a good position and you expected him to at least hit the target, but we will keep going, keep getting the belief into the players and hopefully a victory is just around the corner,” he added.
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