Samba Sow is an injury doubt for Nottingham Forest’s first game of the 2020/21 campaign.
And head coach Sabri Lamouchi will also be without fellow midfielder Tiago Silva for his team’s trip to Barnsley in the Carabao Cup on Saturday.
A short turnaround between the end of last season and the beginning of the new term has left Sow struggling for fitness, with a knee problem having hampered him for much of his first year at the club.
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The 31-year-old was forced off less than half an hour into the Reds’ final match of last season, and is unlikely to be risked against the Tykes.
Winger Joe Lolley, too, had been battling injury in the last few games - suffering from shin splints - as Lamouchi’s side agonisingly missed out on a top six finish.
He has been training with his teammates in the build-up to the weekend’s opener, with a call set to be made about whether to include him in the line-up at Oakwell.
Silva, meanwhile, has been heavily linked with a move to fellow Evangelos Marinakis-owned club Olympiacos this summer and will not be involved in the first round tie.
“Tiago Silva is not available,” Lamouchi told NottinghamshireLive.
“There is some doubt over Samba Sow.
“Joe Lolley has trained with us, so afterwards it will just be my decision.”
It is likely to be a different Forest line-up to that which faced Barnsley in the penultimate fixture of 2019/20 little more than six weeks ago, when they fell to a 1-0 defeat amid a dismal performance.
Five new faces have come through the door since then, with a sixth on the way.
Jack Colback, Tyler Blackett, Lyle Taylor, Fouad Bachirou and Luke Freeman have all arrived, while Miguel Angel Guerrero is expected to sign from Olympiacos.
For Colback, should he feature, it would be his first competitive action since April 2019 - when he ended his second loan spell at the club.
Frozen out at Newcastle United, the midfielder has said he has “not trained properly with a team since December”.
But Lamouchi would have no qualms about fielding him in the first XI.
“He can start,” said the Frenchman.
“He has impressed me and he has impressed everybody from the beginning - like Luke Freeman, like Lyle Taylor. They have increased the level, the intensity and the quality of training.”
