Morgan happy with O'Shea response, Herd still out

Chesterfield might have come through Tuesday's encounter with Blackpool unscathed, but Chris Herd will miss this weekend's visit to Southend.
Chris Morgan - Photo by James WilliamsonChris Morgan - Photo by James Williamson
Chris Morgan - Photo by James Williamson

The Australian is still receiving treatment for a hip flexor injury and is more likely to return to action in a week’s time.

Assistant manager Chris Morgan revealed: “Everyone from the other night is fresh, everyone has trained on Thursday morning.

“Herd’s hip has settled, he’s a little bit better.

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“But he missed Tuesday night’s game so there’s not been a great deal of opportunity for him to train.

“He’ll spend a couple more days with the physio and hopefully we should have him back for the Walsall game.”

Two tough fixtures in such a short space of time has meant the Spireites staff have had to be careful not to overload the players who featured heavily against Gillingham and Blackpool.

Morgan said: “It’s all about rest.

“It’s about mixing training up, the subs and the lads not in the squad need to train, they need to make sure they’re covering the ground and doing the training that they’re missing in games.

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“The lads who played, particularly with the week we’ve had with travelling as well, Gillingham away, Blackpool at home, Southend away this Saturday, it’s just rest, recuperation, get them ready to get back on the pitch.”

Spireites will travel in fine form, unbeaten in four outings, with eight points from a possible 12.

And it pleased Morgan that the players expressed their disappointment at not getting all three at home to Blackpool in midweek.

“ It’s quite a positive from our point of view that the players came in on Tuesday night gutted that they’d not got three points,” he said.

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“We spoke to them and said if you’d have swapped those two results round, drawn with Gillingham and beaten Blackpool on Tuesday, the players would have probably come in buzzing.

“They got a good result Saturday, and the disappointment on Tuesday from my point of view is good, it just shows the past four or five games, how the confidence has built. They’ve come off the pitch after getting a draw, disappointed in it.”

One player in particular with a spring in his step this week is Jay O’Shea, who came off the bench at half-time and fired in a rocket of a shot that levelled the game.

Morgan paid tribute to the 27-year-old for responding the right way to being dropped to the bench.

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“I think he was disappointed to be left out of the team, but I must say his response when he’s come on as sub has been fantastic, and I think it shows his quality.

“We know he’s got quality, we made decisions to change the team and got a few good results. He found himself on the bench, but his reaction has been first class when he’s come on.”