Shrewsbury Town's Josh Vela sidelined for another two weeks

The influential Vela, Town’s player of the season last term, will miss tomorrow’s trip to Ipswich and up to another three fixtures.

The 27-year-old has already missed two league games hobbling out of the 2-1 home victory over AFC Wimbledon two Saturdays ago.

And scans this week confirmed the ligament problem in his knee. Manager Steve Cotterill feels having a scan more than a week after the incident, while Vela had already been recovering, helped the injury blow become easier for the midfielder to accept.

Cotterill said: “We’d left it 10 days to send him for a scan and it was right to. If we did it right away it’d be even more damaging to him mentally. By this weekend it’ll be two weeks out, and he’ll probably miss a month in total because he’s opened up his medial ligament.

“If we’re lucky then three weeks, but I don’t know.”

Cotterill explained how the concern with a medial ligament injury is the risk of re-injury upon return and further setbacks, which could at worst require surgery.

He added: “If he went and had another block tackle now being out a month could easily be three months with an operation on it.

“The good thing is come tomorrow he’s then hopefully only two weeks away, that’s more palatable than saying to him originally ‘it’s a month’.

“He’s in acceptance mode now with the scan. He’s been in, keeping hit fitness levels up, on the WATBike. He’s keeping his strength up with upper-body weights.”

With natural central midfield options thin on the ground, it is likely Town player of the month, left wing-back Luke Leahy, will again shift into the middle.

Cotterill will hope the knock fellow left-sided defender George Nurse is carrying does not rule him out of Town’s clash at Portman Road, as the visitors look to recover from back-to-back league defeats.

Shrewsbury right wing-back Elliott Bennett revealed on Wednesday that his father Paul, the former Bridgnorth Town player and father to AFC Telford man Kyle, had lost his battle with cancer aged 59.

The Shrews boss said Bennett could return to training today and is likely to feature at Ipswich.