LATICS have been hit by an early season injury crisis leaving boss Keith Curle waiting for news from the treatment room.

Curle will look to rotate his options for tonight’s Carabao Cup tie with Accrington Stanley ahead of the weekend trip to Sutton United where they will aim to get their first points of the season on the board.

Their task hasn’t been helped by a squad decimated by unavailability, leaving Curle trying to galvanise his squad to overcome the setbacks they have faced in the early stages of the campaign.

Jamie Hopcutt faces eight weeks on the sidelines, with goalkeeper Danny Rogers unlikely to play again for at least another month, with 23 players having already been used across the four league defeats.

And Curle said: "We know we're fighting, we know we're thin on the ground, but we get on with it, we deal with it and we put in performances whereby it will turn.

“I think the physio had a week where he was twiddling his thumbs, now he's working 24 hours a day.”

Hopcutt, a free agent signing in the summer, made his debut in the defeat at Bradford City earlier this month but hasn’t been seen since.

Providing an update, Curle said: “He comes in and then is out for eight weeks. That kills you stone dead because the lad has got something.”

Tottenham Hotspur loanee Jamie Bowden has played twice since joining the club but has also had a spell on the sidelines and is set to be called up to the Republic of Ireland Under-21s squad which will keep him out of action for the early part of next month.

Ousseynou Cisse has started all four league games so far, but had to be replaced 54 minutes into the Colchester defeat, with Curle awaiting news on the severity of his hamstring problem.

“Cisse, who has just embedded himself into the middle of the team, came off with a hamstring,” Curle said.

“It hasn’t been diagnosed yet but his mobility was severely hampered.”

Jack Stobbs missed out at the weekend, having featured in the previous three league games, the latest player to be added to the growing absentee list.

There is also concern over the injury to goalkeeper Rogers, with MK Dons loanee Laurie Walker talking over between the sticks.

“It’s a vertebrae in his neck, which you can imagine a goalkeeper throwing himself around and landing. He may be out for six weeks,” Curle explained.

“He doesn’t need surgery. He might be having an injection which will hopefully calm it down and then it might be three to four weeks.”