Tranmere midfielder Jay Harris has been ruled out for the rest of the season after suffering an anterior cruciate ligament injury, Micky Mellon has revealed.
The 29-year-old was forced off after half-an-hour of Tuesday’s 1-0 damaging Prenton Park defeat to Forest Green Rovers, a result which leaves them three points and a game behind Nationall League leaders Lincoln City in the title race.
Harris’ injury comes as a huge blow, the Liverpool-born midfielder having been in excellent form of late. He scored the first hat-trick of his career in a 4-1 away win over North Ferriby last month.
Harris, once a youth prospect at Everton, joins Ben Tollitt (knee), Jake Kirby (broken leg) and Darren Stephenson (foot) in having picked up season-ending injuries for Tranmere this term.
Mellon, previewing Tranmere’s Good Friday clash with Aldershot Town, said: “He won’t play again this season, he’s got an ACL knee ligament injury.
“That gives us four or five players this season (ruled out for the rest of the campaign) which I’ve never known in my career. I’ve never known any other club to have so much bad luck, especially when Jay was playing so well as well.
“It’s a big blow for the lad but we get on with it and we’ll look within the group now and somebody will come in and help carry us forward.”
Despite the disappointment of losing Harris, the Tranmere boss is also hopeful of having on-loan striker Jack Dunn back from injury while midfielder James Wallace played 60 minutes in coming from the bench for Harris in mid-week.
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He added: “They trained today, all of them.
“What we’ll try and do, especially at this time of the season and with the amount of time they’ve had off, is manage what they have to do in order to be ready.
“But they’re all good to go. Apart from Jay, we should be okay.”
Another in the frame to return from injury is defender Lois Maynard, who has also enjoyed a full week of training at the club’s Solar Campus headquarters ahead of the clash with Aldershot.
But like Wallace and Dunn, the 28-year-old will need to be managed between now and the end of the season.
Mellon said: “He’ll probably have to share out things with James Wallace because the amount of time they’ve had in their lay-offs.
“I think it leaves us with three recognised midfield players of their types and they can do a bit of both, seeing as we’ve lost Jay.
“We’ll have to manage how we rotate and get them in because it’d be a little bit dangerous to expect to go game after game after game. James is nine weeks, Lois might be five or six. “We’ll try and manage that between Jeff (Hughes) as well, who has not missed a minute. We’ll try and manage that and make sure we try and get that right.”