Tomorrow night’s trip to Oldham Athletic will come too soon for centre-back Will Nightingale’s return from injury.
Assistant manager Neil Cox gave a detailed team news update from the training ground, after Saturday’s impressive 3-1 victory at Bristol Rovers and just before the Dons set off on the road again.
“Will Nightingale is still not ready to be in first-team action, but will be involved in the week in a midweek game that we’ve got coming up,” said Neil in an interview to our premium iFollow Dons subscription channel.
Neil confirmed that the scorer of Saturday’s superb second goal, to kill off the Pirates, will be making the trip north though.
“Harry Forrester (pictured celebrating Wimbledon's opening goal with scorer Andy Barcham) came off with a little bit of cramp on Saturday, but he’ll be fine after his wonder goal and he’ll be raring to go for the next game.”
Versatile George Francomb makes a welcome return to the squad, but left-back Callum Kennedy remains an absentee.
“Callum Kennedy has been struggling with a bit of a back problem for two or three weeks. We’ve just left him on the sidelines to make sure he gets fully recovered and to wait and see how he gets on with that.
“George Francomb will come back into the squad after his suspension. Egli Kaja will be missing, as he felt his hamstring a little bit on Saturday in the warm-up, which is obviously why we didn’t bring him into contention. He needs to be kept back for treatment.
“We’re just waiting for Kwesi Appiah to get fit and he’s doing really well. We’ll hopefully have him back soon.”
Wimbledon head to Lancashire buoyed by their first win at Bristol Rovers since returning to the league. Neil is looking for a repeat performance from the Dons for their second away game in a matter of days.
“I think because we got our three goals, it clicked,” said Neil. “All over though our play was decent – we played really well in midfield, the back four defended really well and the two strikers both worked really hard for each other.
“It was a good Sunday, I enjoyed it. The boys have been working really hard on the training ground and in the last few weeks we’ve started to see some good signs.
“We’ve seen it for over the last seven or eight weeks that the boys have come in raring to go. One or two results haven’t gone for us, but they keep coming in positive, buzzing and waiting. We knew that there were a couple of good results waiting around the corner and that would change and it has at the moment.
“The bus on the way home from Bristol was in good spirits – there was laughing and joking. It’s a long trip up to Oldham and let’s make sure we have a laugh and a joke on the way back again with three points."
The full interview with Neil Cox is now on our iFollow channel.