Nottingham Forest midfielder Morgan Gibbs-White was forced off with injury during their 3-0 EFL Cup defeat to Manchester United, just over a week before their meeting with Leeds United.
Jesse Marsch’s focus has shifted to the FA Cup this week as Leeds prepare to face Accrington Stanley, but the overarching goal for the manager is to guide his side away from the bottom three as soon as possible.
Their next league game is a trip to newly-promoted Nottingham Forest, who have created a bit of daylight between themselves and the relegation zone in 2023.
The 5th of February sees Leeds travel to the City Ground for the first time since 2019/20 in the same month, suffering a gutting 2-0 defeat back then.
Both sides are likely to have key players missing for the meeting, and Forest boss Steve Cooper is going to be praying for the fitness of Morgan Gibbs-White this week.
A defeat to Manchester United in the EFL Cup semi-final (first leg) last night was compounded by an ankle injury suffered by their club-record signing – Cooper had this to say on the matter after the match (via the Nottingham Post):
“He’s got an ankle injury.
“I don’t know the extent of it – whether it’s a kick or something else. We’ll see in the next couple of days.
“The look he gave would just have been Morgan coming off the pitch; he hates not playing every minute of every game. It would just be his natural disappointment of coming off.”
Gibbs-White could be set to join goalkeeper Dean Henderson on the sidelines, who has been ruled out until late February (via Ben Dinnery).
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Gibbs-White is the player that is making Forest tick at the moment, and having him missing would be a massive blow to their chances of picking up results.
A fee potentially rising to £42.5million for Gibbs-White is now looking like better and better business with the more time goes on, and his absence will prove it further.
Him being missing as well as Henderson would be two killer blows for them to deal with, knowing their replacements are not near their quality.