Defender out for at least six weeks and possibly more
Vale are still waiting for a diagnosis to reveal the full extent of John McCombe’s injury as the swelling has not gone down yet, but he is expected to be out for a while.
McCombe limped off after just 17 minutes during the game against Fleetwood Town on New Year’s Day and manager Micky Adams is resigned to being without his stand-in skipper.
The manager said: “John McCombe has had a scan and the news is not good. There is still a fair amount of swelling in his knee so it is very hard to diagnose the problem exactly.
“We need to get the swelling down and then rescan it, but the best case scenario would mean he would be out for six weeks. The worse case, we don’t know yet until the swelling goes down.
“He has got ligament damage that’s for sure and cartilage damage is suspected, so we will have to assess him when it has settled down a bit.”