The joy over Barnsley starting a league season with three points for the first time in seven years has been checked by the news that the club's already busy treatment room has gained three more members to take the number on the sidelines to eight. Boss Keith Hill was already without Luke Steele, Rob Edwards, Jim O'Brien, Toni Silva and Mido for the first couple of months and now they are being joined by Jimmy McNulty, Paul Digby and Matty Done. McNulty, 27, who was installed as captain this summer suffered a hamstring strain on Friday whilst 17 year old Digby, who signed a new deal at the club on the eve of the season, pulled his hamstring in the warm-up before yesterday's clash with Middlesbrough and despite being still named on the substitutes bench, would not have been able to come on. They do say bad things come in threes and so it proved when just 17 minutes into the match, Matty Done was the victim of a heavy challenge which forced the 24 year old off to be replaced by Kelvin Etuhu. Hill, whilst talking to the club's official website confirmed all three are likely to be out until after the international break in September. "The injury situation is also a manager's nightmare, yet it is something we just have to deal with. Before this game we had Mido out for at least six weeks, Jim O'Brien out for between two and three months and Luke Steele still out after missing the whole of pre-season. And then in the last few seconds of training on Friday morning, when we were just running through the set-piece defensive drills, Jimmy McNulty sustains a hamstring injury and will be out for four to six weeks, so won't feature before the international break.
Paul Digby then suffered a slight thigh strain in the warm-up - and just 15 minutes or so into the match Matty Done's been on the receiving end of a poor challenge that there has been no punishment for and he's now looking at four to five weeks out and will probably not return before the inernational break either. So we are down on numbers."
Source: FOOTYMAD
