DAN MAGUIRE's return to the York City side looks set to be further delayed with the striker unlikely to be risked for Saturday's trip to Kettering Town.

The striker's season has been plagued by injuries since his summer move from Blyth Spartans and his latest issue, with his back, has seen him denied starts in all of the last five matches, excluding the North Riding Senior Cup.

Maguire will train with his team-mates tomorrow but it looks likely that the 26-year-old will instead feature in City's next match after Kettering, against Darlington on December 21.

“Dan will be training tomorrow but if we risk him, is it worth it with the fortnight in between the games?" Watson asked rhetorically.

“We’ve got lots of lads like Dan; like Kieran Green and Josh King, lads who all want to play but they maybe need to be a little bit more clued in and honest with us because we don’t know what’s going in with their bodies.

“Dan is a lad that has never had many injuries before coming here. I’m not sure even he knows the severity of his problem. It’s up to us to manage him.

“It’d be crazy to risk him for one game when we’ve got a fixture pile-up and we can get a really good week’s training into him and then another week after.

“That would be the sensible play."

City have also been dealt an injury blow with the news that defender Josh King's back hasn't recovered as quickly as expected.

The centre back has impressive for the club in recent weeks and has deputised competently in the absence of first-choice Joe Tait, who is set for a return to the starting eleven.

“Josh was struggling with his back and that hasn’t really got any better," revealed the manager. "We’ll have another look at him tomorrow.

“But, we’ve got Joe who has been tremendous for us all season. In fact, the Alfreton game at home was the first league game that he’s missed for us this season.

“Elliott (Durrell) also got a couple of bad knocks against Hereford, particularly one in the last minute of the game.

“I was stressing to Micky (Cummins, assistant manager) earlier that one thing that we need to try and address is that the reason that we work harder than we probably should do is how we’re managing the game’s at the moment.

“That’s something that we’ll try and work on. You can get a little bit of a breather when you’re on the ball.

“But when the game is constantly end-to-end and you’re constantly chasing to try and get in the box, you do waste more energy than you would do if you were a little bit more composed.

“That’s something that’s come out from the other night against Hereford."

Reflecting on Tuesday evening's 2-2 draw with Hereford, Watson had few complaints about the performance and felt he couldn't fault the goals his side conceded.

“Performance-wise, I was quite happy with the game," he added.

“It was one of those games where we had two bits of luck that went against us. You can’t judge your performance on what happened in those two moments.

“If you look at their two goals, nobody has really broke us down and there’s been no glaring errors.

“To a degree, I think we’ll always have that solid base. If we can create as we did and play with that speed and tempo, we’ll cause all teams problems."