Coventry City boss Aidy Boothroyd is hoping to celebrate his 40th birthday tomorrow by signing one or two loan players in the recently opened emergency loan market.
He is also desperate for his injured players to return to fitness so he is able to pick his best team as he tries to steer his side out of the ten game winless streak and back up the table.
After watching his severely depleted side go down to a narrow 1-0 defeat at Leeds on Saturday Boothroyd bemoaned the loss of eight first team players, including the in form Marlon King who is reportedly suffering from flu.
However Boothroyd remained upbeat, if frustrated saying, "We're moving towards the key part of the season. You always get situations where you have injuries but I've been around in the game for a reasonable amount of time and I've never known anything like this."
"We've got to get our players back fit and maybe add one or two to boost the squad up a bit, shore up the areas that need strengthening."
"To be honest I feel a little bit shell shocked at the moment. This is a tough place to come, a Colosseum, and it's even harder when you've got a makeshift team. We had to mix and match and change things round again but we gave it a go."
"It was an open, end-to-end game. They created the better chances in the first half but we had two or three good opportunities to score in the second and we go away disappointed but encouraged by some of the individual performances."
"We're not on a very good run right now, that's for sure, but the stats show that we're getting done by the odd goal against good teams and in terms of attitude, application, work rate, you've got to say the performances are good."
Boothroyd is standing by his players and refused to lay any blame on them, "I'm not going to slaughter my players, far from it because they gave their all," he said. "When we've got our best 11 on the pitch I don't fear anybody, but the fact that we've gone so close so often is really irritating."
"If we were getting beaten three or four every week we'd really have a problem but we're talking about fine margins, We're not too far away even though we do keep getting punched in the face, but I don't want to keep saying 'we've played very well and haven't got a result'; it's time I came out and said 'we were awful but we pinched three points.'
"I keep thinking 'come on, give us a break; let it go in off somebody's backside or something.' but we carry on. It's very difficult right now but that will make it all the better when things start going well and we get a little bit of glory."
"I don't feel sorry for myself and I hope the players don't. After all, a lot of them are getting the opportunity to show what they're all about so they should grasp that and use it. Prove to me and our supporters that they want to be here for the longer term."
"People look at the results and emotion comes into it. I can relate to that, but we're very very close to being a good team. The fans who watch our games, who have seen the character and the team spirit know that we're heading in the right direction, even if it is a longer road than we expected it to be."