Alex Russell is enjoying a week of treatment and individual attention at the National Rehabilitation Centre at Lilleshall.

The midfielder has been struggling to get over a thigh injury since September, and his reappearance against Wycombe last month proved to be a false dawn as he had to leave the pitch after half an hour.

United physio Ken Steggles gave me an update for U's Net today, explaining that the problem is with the outside of the thigh muscle, and not the muscle itself. "We thought it was settling well," he said, "Alex had done well, played for the reserves, trained, but then when he played at Wycombe it felt weak and he said he couldn't push off with it properly.

"He was professional enough to point this out to us on the bench and came off."

An MRI scan was taken by Mr Dennis Edwards, the club's Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon, which seemed to indicate that Russell should be able to resume but he was still getting problems, hence the week at Lilleshall.

Ken Steggles continued, "He's there this week, he will be reassessed and he's provisionally booked in for next week as well if he needs it. The club have paid for him to go as they have state of the art equipment and he will have the luxury of being one on one with a physio, while I could only give him about a tenth of that time here. We felt we owed it to the player."

The Cambridge Evening News also mentioned Russell today and Roy McFarland commented, "Alex felt it in training again. He's going to spend a week at Lilleshall to see if they can come up with some training techniques to solve the problem.

"It concerns the sheath of a muscle, rather than the muscle itself, which makes it more tricky. Alex gave us a bit of class last season which stood out in Division Three, and there's no doubt we've missed him at this level."

Defender Scott Eustace is struggling with an ankle injury ahead of Friday night's home match against Luton Town, and goalkeeper Arjan Van Heusden is likely to be missing for at least another week with his thumb injury. Midfielder Scott Paterson missed out at Bristol City with a thigh injury but could be involved on Friday.