ALEX WOODYARD and Michael Duckworth are set to face long-term absences from the York City squad, whilst Adam Crookes is potentially back available for the Minstermen’s match away to Aldershot Town on Saturday, August 19 (3pm).

After sustaining a calf injury in the pre-match warm-up against Altrincham on Tuesday night, Michael Morton has confirmed that Woodyard is potentially facing up to two months on the treatment table, whilst Duckworth remains absent after picking up a knock in the opening day defeat to Wealdstone.

Crookes however has recovered from a dead leg and participated in training today, whilst Kevin Joshua also returned after suffering from illness.

Morton also confirmed that the club were in conversation for a number of players to depart the club on loan, with some to come in, and that the off-the-field issues as revealed on Tuesday had been settled.

“(Woodyard) needs to get a scan to see what that is, it could be up to four to eight weeks. We won’t know until he gets a scan.” Morton explained.

“Crookesy is back in training today, he had a bit of a dead leg, everybody else should be okay.

“Ducky is a long-term one at this moment in time. We’re not expecting him to be back for a while.

“We’ll see how everybody recovers after today, we don’t want to make too many changes because we want to get to a point where we have a settled side.

“We’ll see how everybody recovers from today and then what training looks like tomorrow, if anything it will be one or two little tweaks.

“We’ve got a meeting after this. Some of the players are clear on what’s happening, we want players that are playing and we want to make sure that they are training with us and doing what we want moving forward, but they also need to have games.

“We don’t want to be calling up on a player that hasn’t played in three to four weeks, it’s not going to benefit anybody, hopefully there should be a few movements in the next few days.

“Kevin Joshua has been ill. He has been ill for a bit, so he’s only just had his first training session today, so we’ve got to look after him.

“With Finlay Barnes and the wingers we’ve got at the moment, we’ve just put the other wingers in favour at this moment in time.

“But we know Finlay and he is basically a player we see for the future, he’s done well in pre-season and has still got a bit of work to do, he knows that.

“That’s why we gave him a long-term deal, he’s done well in the last couple of days and if he does well tomorrow then he might be in and around it.

“We had a couple of meetings yesterday and there was a Whatsapp going on around the players.

“We’ve got a scouting team now too which is good, if there’s going to be players going out on loan then we will look to bring some in.

“There will be some people leaving, so we need to have a look at that to get players in.

“We need to give everyone an opportunity first before we look elsewhere.”

Morton also explained that the off-the-field issues had been settled, with every player reporting to training today.

“We’ve spoke with the staff and the players, that’ll be sorted over the next couple of days.

“It’s done, everyone was back on the training pitch today and they’re just trying to make sure we are focused for Saturday.

“I thought the lads trained really well today, they’re all focused and these things happen in football.

“Everyone who was involved, staff and players, have seen it a million times so it’s not something that’s going to knock us.

“But no, everybody was in today and trained well.”