IT'S a case of assessing the walking wounded at Hartlepool United with Graeme Lee having to contend with a number of injury problems in their squad ahead of their trip to Rochdale later today.

Pools had four players missing for Good Friday's defeat to Port Vale at the Suit Direct Stadium but were boosted by the return of top scorer Luke Molyneux who came off the bench in the later stages of the second half.

However, the Pools boss is operating on the side of caution on the winger as he told BBC Radio Tees Sport: "Luke only training in the warm-up yesterday so it wasn't something that I really wanted to do, putting him on, unless we were really looking to push the game.

"His injury is fine but he only did the first part of the session yesterday (Thursday) so it was more about if he came on and sprinted a little bit too much and twinged something. Hopefully we can get a session into him and he will be fine."

Elsewhere, Pools will have been carrying out assessments on several players ahead of the game as Lee continued: "Joe Grey shouldn't be (available). We'll assess (Nicky) Featherstone and see if it settles in two days time. Ben (Killip) hopefully won't be a million miles off.

"I can't see Timi (Odusina). It was from the Salford game. The lad whacked him in his knee and he has been managing it but in this moment, the swelling makes it a struggle to keep it straight."

Asked whether he thinks Odusina will be back before the end of the season, Lee responded: "Hopefully he should be.

"It's just it's been one of them where it needs to be managed. There is probably a lot of them (players) that have been managing niggles and all of a sudden it just gets to a point where unfortunately it catches up on them.

"Hopefully a few days off might settle their bodies down a bit."