Josh Cullen and Jake Forster-Caskey suffered injury setbacks after they were poised to be involved in Charlton’s trip to Preston North End.

Lee Bowyer was made to rue his miserable injury luck once again as the pair of midfielders suffered respective knee and ankle complaints earlier this week.

Both have already been sidelined for significant periods of time through injury and this poses another headache for the Addicks boss.

He said: “You wouldn’t believe our luck at the moment. Jake was meant to start today [but] on Thursday he jarred his knee, did something to his knee. Yesterday it was really stiff so we couldn’t take the risk. He’s been out for so long with his knee so he had to stay behind.

“I don’t know [how long he will be out for].

“Josh Cullen was meant to be on the bench. On Thursday, he went to block a shot and it just caught him on his toe and opened up his ankle a little bit. Today we could have been starting with Jake and Josh coming on as a replacement for him but things just aren’t going our way at the moment.

“That’s part of football. We’ll just get on with it.”

There is still hope, however, that Cullen will be available for the visit of Fulham on January 22 next week.

The Whites themselves will be without star striker Aleksandar Mitrovic as boss Scott Parker confirmed he will be out for three weeks with an ankle ligament problem.

Bowyer added: “We didn’t want to risk him [Cullen] for now because he has come back a week early. We didn’t want to try and risk him now for this game and have a big setback of another three or four weeks.

“The most important thing is just that his ankle settles down. There’s nothing wrong, it just needs to settle down.”