Bristol Rovers winger Harry Anderson has been given time off by the club to recover from a foot injury, Joey Barton has revealed. Anderson is not the type of player to shirk any chance to help his team and had played through pain in recent weeks, but he has been taken out of contention to allow the issue to heal.
Rovers suspected Anderson broke his toe just seconds after kick-off at Ipswich Town last month, but an X-ray showed there was no bone damage. However, the 25-year-old has significant bruising.
In a bid to help his team, Anderson carried on playing with the help of pain-relieving injections before the defeats to Lincoln City and Accrington Stanley. But with slow progress in his recovery, he sat out Saturday's draw at Exeter City and the EFL Trophy win over Crystal Palace under-21s on Tuesday.
"We sent him away for a bit of rest and recuperation," Barton explained. "He had a really severely bruised foot.
"He’d played the past couple of games before his spell out with injections in there. It wasn’t getting better, it was getting worse once the pain medication wore off, so we felt it was time to give him a little bit of time off his feet.
"He got away and had a few days in the sun with his missus last week, so he’s now back in the building and on the road to recovery. We’ve just got to wait for that bruising to settle down so we can get Harry back fully fit."
It seems likely Anderson will also miss Saturday's visit of Cambridge United to the Mem, and another player out of contention is young midfielder Jerry Lawrence. The 17-year-old had started against Plymouth Argyle in the EFL Trophy last month, but he was unable to get another runout in the blue and white quarters this week due to a groin injury.
He has returned to some form of training alongside centre-back James Connolly, who is closing in on a return after a back stress fracture.
"Jerry was never scheduled to play," Barton said. "He’s in the kind of Josh Grant recovery from injury stage, so he’s still a number of weeks off with a groin issue.
"I think it’s a huge spike going from academy into the first team and his body is just adapting to that and he’s had a little bit of an issue with his groin and we’ve had to back off him.
"He is back on the grass training. He and James Connolly trained today and yesterday, but he’s a little bit short and he probably needs another week or 10 days training. Maybe the Swindon game, all being well, he comes back into contention for that."
Meanwhile, Sylvester Jasper and John Marquis picked up knocks on Tuesday, while Alfie Kilgour is in concussion protocol after reporting dizziness to the medical staff at half time against Palace.
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