Town boss Rob Edwards says that Daiki Hashioka and fellow defender Alfie Doughty after available for Tuesday night’s FA Cup fifth round tie at home to Manchester City.
Japan international Hashioka has been impressing in training recently and could be in line to feature for the first time since joining from Belgian side Sint-Truiden in January.
“I’ve been really pleased with him,” Edwards said of Town’s January signing. “He’s getting up to speed really well. The lads like him. He actually scored a volley in training the other day when he was on the other team and we were preparing for one of the games in the last week or two.
“A defensive clearance came out and he scored a volley from the edge of the box and it was great. It’s good for him but I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the time because I was working with the team that we were working on and he scored a brilliant volley. The lads started celebrating with him.
“He’s a really good lad and has fitted in straight away. Good qualities, and all of the stuff I said when we signed him. He’s very aggressive in his defending, really front-footed with his defending as well, and wants to take the ball. He’s certainly going to help us going forwards.”
Doughty, meanwhile, was withdrawn with 16 minutes left of the Town’s 4-1 defeat at Liverpool last week – but is fine to face the reigning FA Cup winners.
Issa Kaboré is unavailable as the Hatters face his parent club and Edwards will also be unable to select Sambi Lokonga, after the Arsenal loanee picked up a hamstring issue in the loss at Anfield.
“Hopefully he will not be too long, hopefully it’s only a couple of weeks,” the boss said on Lokonga. “We had good news on the scan, the injury is there, we’ve got to make sure he feels right, he feels strong and ready to go. This game will clearly be too early tomorrow, and he’ll probably be touch and go for this weekend still.
“We were concerned after the game, we didn’t know how bad it was and it’s good that it doesn’t seem too big of an issue, but it’s an area where we’ve still got to be careful as well because if we push too hard too soon then it could make something really worse.
"So we’re going to have get the timing on that one right. It’s frustrating as you’ve seen how influential he’s been and how good his performances have been so we’ve got to get it right on that one. We can’t push him too soon, but we’ve also got to try and push as every game is really important now. He’s been excellent, he’s a really good footballer and he’s been showing everyone how good he is.”
Striker Elijah Adebayo will again miss out as he continues to recover from a hamstring strain sustained in the warm-up before the Manchester United match - and Edwards hopes his leading goalscorer could return to face Aston Villa on Saturday.
Jacob Brown, Mads Andersen, Marvelous Nakamba and Tom Lockyer will all remain unavailable as the Hatters aim to reach the quarter-finals of the FA Cup for the first since 1994.