Wimbledon v Rotherham United: 'Run harder' is Matt Hamshaw's response despite injury woes

By and large the latest news has been fairly positive, but the headline was that centre-back Thomas Holmes must wait at least two months to build on an impressive debut after damaging knee ligaments in the win over Exeter City.

Injuries have been a depressingly common theme for years, but Hamshaw has concluded bad luck is most to blame this season.

"When you're the manager of a football club you have to look at everything," he said.

"We have numbers and data for everything and it would be remiss of me to not go back through them but there's nothing we've found other than we've been unlucky.

"People will say that's a load of rubbish but we have the keys to the data and that's how the land lies."

His solution is not to ease up.

"We have upped training but we need to up it even more," he insisted.

"Some people's workload is between 20km and 25km, some is higher. Some will do less because their bodies can't tolerate it.

"Everybody's got individual programmes and we provide X, Y and Z to allow them to be at their best on Saturdays – as every club does.

"However, if you look at our sprint distances, and the distances we've covered over the previous few years, it's not been good enough. You don't win games of football by not running any more. Those days are gone.

"We have to manage it the best way we can, we have to look after individuals. We have done that and we've got injuries."

On his injury list, he added: "Lenny (Agbaire) hopefully shouldn't be long. This weekend will come a bit too soon for him.

"We had an encouraging reserve game the other day where Kian Spence, (Josh) Bension and Dru Yearwood got more minutes, Jamal Baptiste got a few more minutes.

"Denzel (Hall) and Kian Etete weren't as bad as we first feared.

"Other than Thomas Holmes this week, I've been quite encouraged. It just feels like everything ramps up.

"However, we're close to getting three or four big players back."