Junior Brown suffers serious knee injury
Shrewsbury Town defender Junior Brown is set for up to nine months on the sidelines after injuring his cruciate knee ligament against Fleetwood Town.
Brown was substituted after 75 minutes on Saturday when he went down awkwardly and scans have revealed that he has suffered a serious knee injury.
“It was probably what we expected”, admitted Paul.
“You always have that bit of hope that Skitty would be wrong in his assessment, but he very rarely is and the scan proved what we feared.
“It’s disappointing for everybody, none more so than the player himself who’s having a good season and it’s ironic that it’s the one position where we haven’t got natural cover in.”
Junior will now undergo a long rehabilitation programme and Paul said it was important that everyone around the club keeps Junior’s spirits high.
“I spoke to him once we got the results and told him what I thought – that I want him to be around the place because he is a good character”, Hurst continued.
“We’ve got to try and keep his spirits up. Some of that comes from Junior himself, but a lot of it comes from us as well and whenever he’s in, he will certainly be made to feel part of it.
“At the minute he seems in very good spirits and that’s what we want. He’s remaining positive and that’s all you can do. He will be a loss, but it’s part and parcel of football unfortunately.”
Hurst will now turn his attention to filling the void left by Brown and he believes there are a few options in the squad.
“There’s Omar, there’s Joe Riley, there’s Bolts, there’s Sads, who can all do a job there.
“Is it their best position? Probably not, but I’m confident in the players ability. It might be that up until January we might see a couple of people play there, so nothing’s set in stone with regards to a way forward.
“But, there’s no doubt that in January we will be looking to try and get a specialist full-back in and that’s not a criticism of what anyone does between now and then.
“I think naturally we want to have the best squad we can in place and it’s typical that we’ve picked up this injury in the one position where we didn’t have a natural replacement.”