Injury crisis worsens for Mansfield Town as trio hurt in defeat at Cardiff City

Kyle Knoyle, Aaron Lewis and Jordan Bowery will be assessed this week as the treatment room continues to be filled with a growing list of casualties with eight key players already out before kick-off today.

With so many first choice players missing, boss Clough was happy with large parts of today's performance away to a high quality Cardiff for whom Will Fish headed them in front in the first half and then Yousef Salech and Cian Ashford sealed it after the break.

On the injuries, Clough said: “Kyle has gone over on his ankle, or just above it, and there was no way he could carry on.

“Then Aaron went into a tackle near the end and I am not sure what he has got.

“With almost the last kick of the game Jordan Bowery put a cross over the back of their goal and seems to have done something to his groin, so add them to the list.

“And we had to take Stephen McLaughlin off as, having been booked, if we lost him as well on the back of Kyle's injury and Ryan Sweeney being ill, we had to be cautious.

“It will be January before we get people back.

“There may be one or two – Joe Gardner might be okay for next week. But it will be January before we see a real difference.”

On his side's performance, he said: “I thought we did well in periods of the game.

“I thought we hung on in there in the first half, though I was very disappointed to concede from a corner - their lad just got away from Jamie (McDonnell) with a good header.

“But second half I thought for 25 minutes, up until their second goal, we were very good indeed.

“If we had scored in that period, you never know.

“At 1-0, there were four incidents where if one had gone our way it might have been a different outcome.

“With the players we had missing today I thought in spells it was a good performance. We just lacked that bit of quality to get us a goal.

“But it was encouraging we could come here with not even half a team and compete as we did.

“They're going to get automatic promotion so it was always going to be a tough afternoon whether we had everyone available or not, though we would have been better equipped to deal with it.

“They are on a different level.”

Stags keeper Liam Roberts kept the score down with a string of fine saves and Clough said: “Liam was outstanding again, but we caused him some of our own problems today, especially that backpass from Jordan Bowery.”

Mansfield next head for League Two Accrington Stanley next weekend in the FA Cup and Clough said: “We want to try to win.

“We have lost three on the spin now and we want to try to get a positive result to take us into Bolton and then Wimbledon – a tough run of fixtures coming up.

“With everyone fit it would have been a tough run.

“But we will get through it and we'll have a go at them.”