Crawley skipper George Francomb is set to miss their trip to Southend this afternoon as their injury problems continue to mount up.

The midfielder limped off 53 minutes into Monday’s 4-1 home defeat by Oldham, with former Albion youngster Archie Davies replacing him.

Reece Grego-Cox and Tom Dallison remain on the sidelines, while Henry Burnett, Tyler Frost and Davide Rodari may also miss out.

On-loan midfielder Jake Hesketh has returned to parent club Southampton to continue his recovery from injury.

However, striker Ashley Nadesan who was a doubt for the game, came off the bench in the 40th minute against Oldham and is pushing for a return to the starting XI.

The Reds slim chances of a play-off place have faded over the last month, having lost four of their last five games.

They have not won a game since March 13 when they beat Mansfield 1-0 at The People’s Pension Stadium.

That has left them 14th in the table and eight points off the final play-off place, with seven games to go.

However, in those final seven games they have to face three of the current top seven (Cheltenham, Bolton and Newport).

But head coach John Yems (pictured) urged his side not to spoil what has been a good season, with a poor finish to the campaign.

He said: “I have had a conversation with the boys that up until now, if you take out the last couple of games, we have had a good season.

“But if we do not improve on those sort of games (against teams around or below us) or we are going to finish on a bit the season on a low.”

Meanwhile their opponents, Southend appointed former boss Phil Brown as their new manager after sacking Mark Molesley yesterday with six games of the season left.

The Shrimpers are six points adrift of safety in League Two and are facing dropping out of the Football League for the first time since joining in 1920.

Molesley took over in the summer but had won just eight of his 40 league matches in charge.

Brown returns to Roots Hall where he managed for five years between 2013 and 2018 and took the club from League Two into a solid League One outfit.