A further injury to Jamie Grimes this afternoon leaves Ebbsfleet boss Kevin Watson with a small squad to select from in midweek – but the manager still has decisions to make despite his reduced pool of players.

Grimes departed in the first half after he was fouled in an aerial duel and he went to ground.

“He went up and landed awkwardly on his back and his back tightened up,” Watson reported. “Hopefully Grimesy will be able to get that [injury] manipulated on his back, it might have just gone into spasm and he’ll be OK. He’s a hard boy so it must have been painful for him to come off.”

With Josh Umerah suspended, Albie Morgan back at Charlton and Alex Lawless nursing further hamstring problems, it may be a case of some hours on the telephone for Watson.

“We are down to the bare bones so there could be some phone calls on Monday,” he said. “However, I’ve only got one loan left as we’ve got four so it will literally be a case of hoping the boys can recover and are fit.”

The Fleet boss also issued a rundown of the latest casualties, with better news for John Goddard.

“He is closer, he’ll be training in two weeks,” said Watson, “though he’ll probably not be available to play for a month. Alex Lawless keeps having problems with his hamstrings and he limped out of training on Thursday. It was just one hamstring but it’s now both that keep playing him up so that’s something we need to look at. Aswad Thomas is not really close. Cody is still a long way off so we are shy on that.

“Obviously Marvel Ekpiteta [subbed at half-time this afternoon] will be available again so although it’s barebones, it’s a headache for me to decide who plays and who plays where. The boys have had their chances and when we broke play up today, and there were plenty of times we did, the next pass was poor. The boys will appreciate that and what we have been good at is breaking up play and attacking with quality, scoring goals.

“I’m quite pleased we’ve limited them. I wouldn’t say they’ve peppered our goal, Harry’s made a couple of good saves. The corners weren’t really coming to anything, yeah the crowd were up behind the goal but it wasn’t really off the line and all that sort of stuff.”