Spireites hoping for good news on defender, Coke '˜very close' to contributing

The centre-half hurt his knee in the home defeat by Crawley and the extent of the damage is not yet known.

Ahead of tomorrow’s visit of Cambridge United, Spireites boss Lester gave an update on the Millwall man.

“He had a scan last week and he had a CT scan over the weekend and we’re just waiting on results of that,” he said.

“The swelling has gone and we’re quite hopeful we’ll get good news, but we haven’t had the news yet.”

Another player whose availability was in doubt before Saturday’s postponement of the game at Morecambe was Andy Kellett.

Last week Lester said the Wigan Athletic player’s knee injury wasn’t a serious one, but the joint wasn’t all that was ailing the 24-year-old.

“He’s been off with illness quite a lot last week and we didn’t feel he was well enough to travel at the weekend,” said Lester.

“I just think it’s the bug that’s going around.

“A few of our players have picked it up and hopefully that will be the back of it now.”

With players struggling to feel 100 per cent, a waterlogged pitch at Morecambe wasn’t the worst thing to happen to Chesterfield.

And instead of hauling the entire squad back to the Proact, Lester felt some players could do with a rest.

“We were halfway up the road, we travelled on the day of the game,” he said.

“We sat down with Tommy and Nicky, the lads who were getting back to fitnses were in and trained, had their gym sessions.

“The cancellation, we weren’t too disappointed, we were a little bit stretched with illness and lads playing with little niggles, so it gave the lads a couple of days to come up for air.

“I expect an energetic performance on Tuesday because of that.”

Chesterfield fans are still waiting for free agent signing Giles Coke to make his debut and although he wouldn’t confirm if tomorrow night would bring it, Lester says the former Sheffield Wednesday man is nearing action.

“Absolutely. We took him out of the matchday squad for the first game so we could get more fitness work in and he then played a (friendly) game.

“He feels good and he’s very close.”