How important is it that Ritchie plays against Charlton?

Matt Ritchie has not been seen in an AFCB shirt for a long time now. I believe his last outing was in the first half against FC Zurich. His absence from the training pitches and the starting line ups have not been good news for Howe and Tindall. If there is one player that they would like to be fit for Saturday it would be a player who has been the player of his division for the last two seasons. The only pleasing thing that AFCB fans can say is that we are blessed with many great wide players who can cover his position.

McDermott is one of those looking to impress this week.

The question is if Ritchie is not ready who would get the calling? I think we can rule out Fogey and McQuoid who are both yet to recover from their injury worries. That leaves Fraser, McDermott and Coulibaly as my favourites to battle for the place. It will be quite a real feather in the cap of one of these three if they do get the green light. It is possible that the job will be shared with perhaps one of the players covering 60 minutes and another doing the final half hour. Such a prospect is highly likely. Fraser and Coulibaly are probably still getting used to playing the AFCB way, while McDermott has been with the team the longest but is only just coming back to the form that we saw from him when he first came to the club.

This weeks training should be pretty tasty for these three but there are other battles going on in other areas for first team places as well. Eddie has a really busy week.