Peterborough United manager Grant McCann on injury doubts and the need for patience against Forest Green Rovers

McCann has been delighted with the recent form of his players who have delivered three wins and a draw in their last four competitive fixtures.

But they dropped points from a frustrating 1-1 draw at home to another struggling club Burton Albion on Saturday so they are keen to return to winning ways, although they could be missing a couple of regulars because of niggles for the first ever game against Forest Green. McCann did not name the players concerned in his pre-match press conference today.

Posh will jump above Bolton and Barnsley to fifth with a win tomorrow and a two-goal victory would take them above Portsmouth into fourth.

Posh are the only team in the top seven in action tomorrow.

“We know all games are difficult in this league,” McCann said. “And Forest Green had a good win against Bolton on Saturday and I watched them beat Accrington a couple of weeks ago.

"They will be tough to beat. They’ve used several formations this season and they have a new manager (Ian Burchnall joined from Notts County in the summer) stamping his authority on the team.

"We will have to be patient as they could play with five defenders and one striker. We will have to move the ball well and be clear in our thinking.

"We have a couple of players who are touch and go for tomorrow, but if they don’t play they will be ready for Saturday. We have to manage the squad as we have a lot of Tuesday/Saturday games coming up.

"But I have been pleased with my players in the last four games.

"We’ve played to a very high standard. We’ve scored 10 goals in that time and for 30 minutes of the second-half against Burton we played as well as we have all season in terms of controlling the play and creating opportunities.

"We moved the ball really well and created good overloads, but we just didn’t take our chances, and we had loads of them.

"When you do that you leave yourself open to a sucker punch and that’s exactly what happened, but the metrics we use to judge our performance were all very good.

"And if we keep doing that we will give ourselves the best opportunity of winning. It was just a case of lacklustre finishing and not just from the forwards.”

Defender Dan Butler is not one of the players facing a late fitness test despite his recent return from a long lay-off. McCann believes Joe Tomlinson is now Butler’s rival for the left-back slot as the manager wants to use Harrison Burrows in a central midfield role.

Joel Randall is back in contention for a place in the matchday squad after missing out at the weekend for reasons of form rather than injury.