Allan Campbell and Fred Onyedinma have both suffered ligament damage to add to Luton’s injury and illness crisis, which Nathan Jones has described as his toughest as a manager.
Onyedinma was injured in a training ground collision, while Campbell limped off at Ewood Park on Saturday after a red card worthy challenge from Blackburn’s Darragh Lenihan, though the Rover was not dismissed.
Town are not yet sure how long they’ll be sidelined, though Campbell appears to have avoided a season-ending blow.
Jones said of the former Motherwell midfielder: “It’s ligament damage, it’s a high ankle sprain and he’s very, very fortunate, honestly, really fortunate. It will be a spell on the sidelines, we don’t know how long exactly. It’s pretty similar to Fred Onyedinma’s Fred was on the training ground, an innocuous one, whereas that was slightly different, so we’ll just have to wait on.”
Also before Town’s late 2-2 comeback draw, Jones lost Admiral Muskwe in the warm-up, Elijah Adebayo to flu overnight, and Amari’i Bell to a training ground knock.
And Luton began the season with a makeshift defence and centre halves Sonny Bradley, Tom Lockyer and Reece Burke all sidelined.
Asked if the level of absences has been the toughest during his time at Town, Jones said: “Since I’ve been a manager. Things that have been happening are unfathomable, we’ve always had about 95 per cent availability rate.
“We’re carrying a slightly bigger squad than we would have envisaged but it is a good job we are. Luckily enough we have a strong squad so when we do make a change or two, it doesn’t weaken us and that is a good thing.
“It has been a tough time through lots of stuff, I’m sure a lot of people have had that but this has been my toughest time in terms of people being unavailable and so on. It has been like that since the end of pre-season.
“We were in a real strong position after the Portsmouth game and then suddenly we have never been able to pick from what we would imagine to be a full squad.
“Not all of them are injuries, some of them are illness as well. The last three away games we’ve lost someone on the morning or the night of the game through illness so it isn’t just injuries.
“To be fair, it isn’t soft tissue injuries either. Fred picked up an ankle sprain in training, Allan Campbell, as we saw, was the victim of a horrific challenge, so it is a little bit of everything, not something you can put your finger on.
“One or two muscular ones and we don’t tend to pick up muscular ones and then things like impact injuries which you can’t fathom for. It has been a bit of everything but it should settle down. We have a strong enough squad we believe so we’re looking forward to the game.”
There were some positives among the squad on Saturday though. Captain Sonny Bradley came on as substitute at Blackburn for his first appearance of the campaign after suffering badly with Covid-19, while Luke Berry came off the bench to bag a brace and earn a point.
