Phil Brown spoke to the media ahead of Town’s FA Cup First Round clash with York City.
Town will be looking to beat league opposition in the tournament for the first time since 2011, when the Robins beat Wigan Athletic – then of the Premier League.
Brown ruled out Michael Doughty and Toumani Diagouraga with separate injuries.
"Michael Doughty is still under a stringent regime elsewhere, meaning not necessarily the club doctor but his ow doctor.
“He’s going through a course of anti-biotics because a little bit of the infection as spread through is foot.
“It’s a very unfortunate injury, the cut itself was in a horrible place and it wasn’t as if he’s been shirking any responsibility since when it happened about three days ago.
“He played 60 minutes against Notts County with injections in his foot, unfortunately the injections didn’t work the way we wanted and consequently means he isn’t available for selection this weekend.”
Marc Richards is also looks unlikely to feature after suffering a thigh strain in the warm up away at Colchester last week.
Diagouraga sustained a thigh injury in a behind closed doors match against Southampton Under-23s on Tuesday.
The match featured a number of younger players which prompted the Gaffer on the topic of youth development and the announcement of the club’s new training ground proposals.
“I always liked the academy, and this is another thing where the training ground is concerned, so the first team can be training on the same side as the younger lads.
“For me if you don’t then you’ll never get there with the natural progression. What I mean by that is, when a first team player goes down injured or pulls out of the warm up, you can actually get a youth team player and bring them across, which actually happened this morning.
“Luke Haines came across and I’ve seen Luke in a few pre-season friendlies, I’ve seen him on the training ground and I’ve seen him play for the U23s.
“For him to come and join the first team has given a young pro a great opportunity to progress even quicker.
“If he had to jump in a car and drive 25 minutes to come and join our training session, makes it much harder you want to have continuity and have kids coming through.
“Sometimes a curveball like this can massively help the progress of young players.
“We’ve got great opportunities with Joe Romanski, he’s already playing first team football, same as Scott Twine who was near the first team when I joined.
“Joe needed a push in the right direction, same as Jordan Edwards. Now all of a sudden, they’re starting to understand how important preparing, living, and working alongside senior pro’s is to them.
“Now they’re feeling comfortable and simply joining in at training, that’s so important. They’ve now got an opportunity to double or triple the amount of appearances they’ve made for the first team.
“You’ll never have good kids if you don’t have good seniors."
