Penney back in striker market

DEJECTED: Daniel Nardiello is carried from the pitch last night.

ATHLETIC will attempt to enter the loan market for a striker after Daniel Nardiello picked up a hamstring strain in the impressive victory over Leyton Orient.

The on-loan Blackpool forward suffered the injury shortly before the hour in the 2–0 win at Boundary Park and is set to miss the next three Coca-Cola League One matches.

Manager Dave Penney – who tried to bring in an extra attacking player to compensate for the return to Millwall of loan man Jason Price yesterday – will carry on with his efforts to boost Athletic’s attacking options via a loan swoop.

“Daniel looks as though he has got a hamstring injury,” said Penney, after a win which takes Athletic above Tranmere and into 19th place in the division.

“We are not quite sure how long he will be out and we will assess it in the next couple of days once it has settled down and see where we go after that.

“His first game was a tough trip down at Exeter and he came off with cramp down there in his groin.

“It settled down quickly but this doesn’t look like it will be as short-term and he will certainly be missing for a week to 10 days I would have thought, minimum.

“We tried before the game to get a striker in and will continue to do that for the rest of the week.”

As for the Orient win, Penney believes that the timing of both goals played a big role in the overall performance.

“The players were excellent and everybody stepped up to the plate,” he said,

“Performances have been decent against Millwall and Norwich without us getting the results and I don’t think we probably played as well against Orient.

“But we got an early goal which gave us confidence to push on from there. They stepped up a level after that.

“It was great to get the second one so early in the second half as it was important we didn’t sit back and become edgy because we hadn’t won for a couple of games.”

Penney also said that Dean Furman (knee), Jim Goodwin (thigh strain), Keigan Parker (groin) and Ryan Brooke (hamstring) all have chances of returning for the big game at home to Wycombe this Saturday.