Charlton Manager Lee Bowyer spoke to the media on Thursday morning ahead of Friday evening's visit of Hull City to The Valley.
You can get your ticket for Friday’s game by clicking here.
Bowyer’s full press conference is available to watch on Valley Pass and the Valley Pass app now.
Below are some of the talking points.
On dealing with an unprecedented number of injuries…
“I keep seeing the same names on the board to choose from and it doesn’t get any easier. The players are trying. The quality hasn’t been what it was in the early stages of the season. It’s difficult and we’re limited with what we can do. If you took 12 players out of any squad… even if you took Lionel Messi out of Barcelona’s squad and a lot of their starting players, it would be difficult.
“We have the smallest budget by a long way, so we need our players to be fit and be able to compete, and even then it was difficult for us. If you think back to the start of the season, yeah, we had a good start but no game is easy. We had to fight for every point.
“Now when you come down to bare bones, it becomes even harder. But the most important thing for me, and I said this to the players yesterday, is that we just need to stick together and keep working hard.”
On Sam Field’s fitness…
"I had a good conversation with the sports scientist in West Brom the other day, and he said that Sam Field will be back with us on Wednesday. They’ve sent me some of the videos of what they have been doing with him outside and he looks good. You can’t just chuck him in and start him but at least we can have a player that we can start bedding back in like what we were doing with Lyle [Taylor] and what we are going to have to do with Jonny Williams. Hopefully they start coming back slowly but surely and they start giving us a better chance.
On Lyle Taylor’s involvement on Friday…
“Lyle will be involved with the squad again. We have to be careful with Lyle. We can’t be stupid with him because then if he breaks down and he’s out for another eight to 10 games then, we’ll all be kicking ourselves. So we have to do things the right way with Lyle.
“I have to take advice from the medical team. There’s no one more that would love to see Lyle starting on Friday, but we have to be careful. We’ve missed him, even when he came on for 20/30 minutes, he makes a big difference for us, you can see that both in and out of possession.
“But we have to do things the right way, there’s still 20-odd games to go – a long way to go. And let’s be realistic, we’re ahead of schedule, we’re ahead of where everyone thought we would be now. We’re not in the bottom three, we’re competing in every game with half of our squad out. And once we start getting them back, I have no doubt that we will start winning games again because that’s what we do.”
On meeting ESI’s chairman Matt Southall…
“We’ll have discussions tonight, but I’ve not spoken with them personally since the announcement. I only know what everyone else knows, I’m just hearing what everyone is saying. It’s now in the EFL’s hands. I know no more than anyone else.
“I’m sure I’ll get more of an idea tonight with what the situation is and what is happening moving forward. I wasn’t the one that asked for the meeting. Matt was the one that wanted to meet myself and Steve Gallen. We will go there open minded and hopeful.”