Mansfield Town banking on Chris Clements’ powers of quick healing

The club are unsure how long he is likely to be after he limped out of Saturday’s 1-0 defeat at Luton, but Murray said: “He’s going to be a few weeks.

“It’s not the good news that we all wanted. Luckily for us Clem is a quick healer. The previous injuries he has had, it’s been half the time he’s come back in that from what has been diagnosed.

“So we are hoping that will be the case this time. For an exact time frame we are not 100 per cent sure, but he will be a couple of weeks at least.”

Although Murray has Jack Thomas, Mitch Rose and Jamie McGuire who can all do a job in central midfield, the manager admitted: “Chris has been on fire. He’s done exactly what I predicted he’d do.

“We were looking forward to building from the performances he has put in. But these things happen and you deal with it. We’ve got players who can come in and take that mantle.

“If it means us re-jigging the shape a bit to get the best out of the players coming in, we will do so.

“But, even though we have a small squad, we have a very functional squad and we are a strong squad, so it’s nothing that will rock us too much and we move on.

“Chris is gutted. He is in a rich vein of form. He has been dictating games on his own at times which is brilliant for him and the partnership with Chappie (Adam Chapman) has been superb for us.

“We are going to miss him for a couple of weeks, but someone else will come in.”