Time to dig in and get results message from Doncaster Rovers boss as wait for injured players continues

Though Jordy Hiwula made his debut for the club on Tuesday night following an ankle injury, Wellens confirmed Aidan Barlow is out of action with a hamstring injury while Tom Anderson is still not ready to return.

It is also understood that Cameron John is expected to miss the rest of the month with a back injury he has been carrying for several weeks.

Injuries have blighted the campaign so far, with Rovers awaiting news on Jon Taylor following a cyst-related setback in his recovery while Fejiri Okenabirhie remains two to three weeks away in his comeback.

But Wellens insists nothing can be done to improve the situation imminently and those players that are available must take the responsibility for improving Rovers’ fortunes on their shoulders.

“We get to the international break and we think that three or four players will be back by the time we come out of it,” Wellens said.

“Then Tom Anderson picks up the injury against Portsmouth and ends up being out longer than what we thought.

“Cameron John has got a CT scan on his back this week.

“At the minute I feel shocking because I feel like the luck is not there at all.

“But I need to dig in. We all need to dig in and make sure we go to Wigan on Saturday and put in a performance that allows us to get something from the game.

“Both games against Rotherham were a wake-up call.

“We need to start winning games and picking up points.

“We’ve had a tough run of fixtures. We’ve played a lot of favourites to be up there.

“It’s been tough because we’ve had such a fragmented team with injuries.

“We need to get to the stage where we dig in over the next few weeks and hopefully a few more should be back and others will be up to speed with fitness.”

Ben Close limped off during Tuesday’s 6-0 defeat to Rotherham United in the Papa John’s Trophy but Wellens is not too concerned about the midfielder.

“We think that it was just cramp but it was spasming quite a lot,” Wellens said.

“Rather than leave him on, we didn’t want to risk it because we are so short of numbers.

“I looked at my team on Tuesday and we’d got probably seven players that would get in our starting XI that were not involved.

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