Graham Alexander gives Preston North End injury update on Lewis Gibson, Caleb Wiley and Liam Lindsay

There’s yet more bad news on the injury front for Preston North End with defensive duo Lewis Gibson and Caleb Wiley likely out of Saturday’s fixture against West Brom, while Liam Lindsay is a doubt as well.

Graham Alexander has had to deal with a flurry of injuries since taking charge at Preston.

He had been without captain Ali McCann and Wiley from the off, but has since lost Harry Clarke and Liam Gibbs for significant periods.

Now centre-back pairing Gibson and Lindsay have joined Preston’s casualty list, extremely limiting the manager’s defensive options ahead of the home fixture with West Brom on Saturday.

Gibson missed Alexander’s first game in charge against Millwall due to illness after reporting to Deepdale but being sent home. He returned to action for the first time since September 8 off the bench against Birmingham City, playing 29 minutes.

However, he pulled out of the squad to face Wrexham on Saturday morning and was sent for a scan to discover the severity of the issue. The full extent has not yet been confirmed but he will not be involved at Deepdale this weekend.

Speaking in his pre-match press conference, Alexander said: “We're still waiting for exact confirmation on Gibson, to how long that will be.

“Yeah, [Gibson unavailable] for this weekend, he will be, yeah, yeah, definitely.“

When asked by BBC Radio Lancashire if losing him was a blow, Alexander added: “Yeah, it is because, I think we've had him in the squad on the Friday twice now.

“The first weekend he was quite poorly on the day of the Millwall game and then last week he completed the training on Friday, travelled with us to Wrexham, but felt something and then we waited until Saturday morning, see how it was, and it was a little bit sorer, so we thought the best action was to delve into it and make sure we know what it is.

“So we're just waiting for confirmation from the actual specialist in that sort of area. He's been so close twice now in the three games we've had. And then, unfortunately, lost him rather last minute.

“Par for the course really with players, suspensions, injuries, all that sort of thing, you’ve just got prepared to pick the best team from what you have.”

Lindsay and Wiley latest

Lindsay made his first appearance since September 1 at The Racecourse Ground, but had to hobble off the field after 56 minutes, with Wrexham’s third and fourth goals following shortly afterwards. The centre-back is a doubt for Saturday after not training so far this week.

On the defender’s condition, Alexander said: “He got a a dead leg when he went into a duel with their striker. He was struggling with it to be fair, so he's not trained with us this week as yet, but we're hoping he gets out on the grass on Friday.

“It was a bit of a blow for us in that particular game as well, because I thought he was handling the physical threat that Wrexham had well until, unfortunately, he went off and you could see the problem that caused us after that.”

Wiley, meanwhile, is continuing his recovery but is not expected to be ready for West Brom.

The on-loan Chelsea star trained with Alexander for the first time last Wednesday but the trip to Wrexham came too soon for him, having played his last game on September 5, and that remains the case.

Alexander said: “He's trained today. We had a behind closed doors game yesterday, which he played 30 minutes in, which was really positive.

“He's been back with us since Friday, but three or four days, he probably needs a little bit more to return to play.

“He looked sharp on the training pitch, but obviously that's not the sort of the level of what a game would be on a Saturday. “

Preston will at least welcome back Stanley Mills to the squad at the weekend after serving a one-game suspension for his red card at Birmingham.