Braintree Town boss Alan Devonshire expects to be missing central defender Alan Massey once again when his team continue their punishing run of eight Skril Premier games in 18 days with a trip to Welling United tonight.

Massey has been out for the last two games after injuring his foot at Lincoln City recently.

A scan has shown that the problem isn’t the long-term one that Devonshire feared, but he does think tonight’s game will come one too soon and thinks he is more likely to return in Thursday’s home game against Nuneaton.

He said: “Alan has had a scan and it looks like he is all clear.

“So he should be back for either Thursday or Saturday, but not tonight.”

Another player struggling to be back is striker Jordan Cox, who is still trying to shake off a back problem that has kept him out since January.

“It’s becoming a bit of a pain as I was expecting Jordan back before the Lincoln game,” said Devonshire.

“The lad’s suffering a bit so he’ll rest it a bit and see how he goes.

“He has been training and he wanted be on the bench for the second game against Lincoln.

“I said no because he hadn’t trained properly.

“He trained hard ahead of the Aldershot game and it flared up again so we don’t know at the moment.”

There is more encouraging news for Sam Habergham, though, and the Iron boss said he had “a chance” of being back tonight after a hamstring problem kept him sidelined for Saturday’s 1-0 win against Aldershot.

Meanwhile, Devonshire said he isn’t actively looking to add to his squad ahead of the closure of the loan window at the end of this month, but did say that, with the number of games still to come, he would look at any opportunities for new players to come in if they arose.