Potts' groin injury not as bad as first feared

The defender was stretched off just moments before half time during Luton’s 2-0 win at the weekend, as it was feared he might be set for a lengthy spell on the sidelines.

However, that shouldn’t be the case, as speaking at his press conference this morning, Jones said: “It’s just a slight groin strain really, he’s walking around, not a problem, so it might be a week or so, or slightly longer.

“We’ll see, we can’t rush those things. He had a similar type of thing but nowhere near as bad in the last home game and we brought him off immediately.

“He recovered for Barnsley, but this one is slightly worse, so we’ve just got to be careful with it.

“I think the alarm bells ring with a stretcher as you think something really, really bad and so on, but we’ve had a few of them.

“We had Scott Cuthbert carried off on a stretcher that ended up playing on the Tuesday, so it’s precautionary and nowadays, with health and safety gone bonkers, most of the time rightly so, it’s just processes we have to stick to.”

When Potts went off at the weekend, James Justin came off the bench in his place, although Jones faces a decision between the youngster and club captain Alan Sheen for tomorrow night’s home clash with Accrington Stanley.

He continued: “There is a choice, between those and we’ve got good cover in that area.

“Sheez is a big player for us, in what we do and how we play and so on.

“It’s a decision for me, it’s what we do, he’s going to come up against a good player on that side (Sean McConville), so whatever we do, they’ve got to be defensively strong and we’ll pick a team accordingly.”

Striker Danny Hylton came back in for his first start in nine weeks and has showed no signs of a reaction, as Jones said: “We wanted to bring him off slightly earlier, it’s difficult, if we had just got a third, we’d have brought him off a lot earlier.

“I didn’t expect him to last as long, but he did, so it was a good run out for him.

“We’ve got to be careful with him as we can’t just flog him now, push him too hard and then he breaks down.

“He’s in real good form, he’s trained for a number of weeks with us, we brought him back at the right time, he had 15 minutes at Barnsley and now he’s had the 80 minutes, so he’s ready now.”

That only leaves midfielder Luke Berry missing from selection, as he continues to recover from a knee injury.

Jones added: “We’re probably ultra careful with him in terms of the injuries he’s had.

“He’s got a little bit of soreness from training hard, so we just take him back a day and then to kick him on.

“He’s very, very close, but it’s one of those things, we want him to be ready when he does come back in, because he’s been out for a little while.”