Colchester United head coach John McGreal has stressed he must be careful not to take risks with their injured players ahead of their game at Newport County tonight.

Defensive duo Kane Vincent-Young and Ryan Inniss will both be assessed ahead of the game at Rodney Parade, after both sitting out the 1-0 home defeat against Carlisle United due to hamstring injuries.

Doug Loft has also been struggling with a hamstring problem of late and boss McGreal concedes he cannot afford to gamble on player fitness and risk longer-term injuries.

McGreal said: “We have to look at our injuries and hopefully, we’ll get one or two back because at the minute you want to get that fully-fit squad that we had a couple of weeks ago and then we lose a couple in a heartbeat.

“You have to be careful with hamstring injuries and you don’t want to risk it and for it to affect four, five, six or seven weeks.

“It was a major blow to lose Ryan – he went down with a bit of a tight hamstring on Thursday.

“It’s a case of assessing it day by day, similar to Kane (Vincent-Young).

“If you think back to the starting line-up from the Mansfield game, we were missing two good players in Vincent-Young and Inniss and we have to adapt to that.”

Sanmi Odelusi is pushing for his first Colchester league start at Newport tonight, after impressing boss McGreal as a substitute against Carlisle.

Odelusi, who joined the U’s from Wigan Athletic in August, played the final 12 minutes against the Cumbrians, after replacing Loft.

“I though Sanmi came on and made a bit of an impact and he got himself in and around it,” said McGreal.

McGreal is looking for a response from his Colchester players tonight, after defeat against Carlisle resulted in a first loss in four league matches.

McGreal added: “I think we’re in a good place.

“The boys are disappointed as we all are, knowing that we haven’t come away with something from the game.

“They put in a terrific second-half performance but we have to be a little bit cuter and cleverer to add to those two or three opportunities – we’re looking for three, or four or five, especially at home and we were unable to do that.”

Colchester will still be without Sammie Szmodics, Kurtis Guthrie, Luke Prosser and Brennan Dickenson for tonight’s clash.