GARY Bowyer remains confident City’s current absentees will be fit and firing to start League Two.

Jermaine Anderson, Shay McCartan, Paudie O’Connor and Zeli Ismail again sat out Saturday’s 1-1 draw with Wigan at Valley Parade.

While Anderson played the first half of the opening friendly at Guiseley, the other three are yet to appear in the pre-season programme.

But Bowyer, who is still keen to add a couple more bodies to his squad, has no worries about them being ready for the curtain-raiser against Cambridge a week on Saturday.

He said: “There’s no concerns on that point.

“Jermaine had time at Guiseley, he’ll be back in today and Zeli shouldn’t be far away from it then either.

“To be honest, I’m disappointed a couple of them didn’t quite make it to play on Saturday.

“From our point of view, they are all out on the grass training and we’re just erring on the side of caution.

“We’re now two weeks away from the start of the season and the last thing we needed to do was go silly and try to force to get minutes in and set them back.

“Hopefully then, they feature either tomorrow against Bradford (Park Avenue) or certainly next Saturday at Rochdale.

“We’ve got to make sure they are ready for those minutes rather than us being in a rush to get those minutes into them.”

Jordan Gibson got his chance in the starting line-up that played just over an hour at the weekend. Bowyer praised the performance of the young winger, who was on loan at Stevenage when he took over the City helm in March.

He added: “I only met Jordan from the start of pre-season and the way he’s applied himself since we’ve been back is very good.

“Sometimes we forget he’s only 21 and he’s got loads more to come, whether it’s playing in the middle of a three or out wide.

“The fact he can play in a variety of positions helps the squad massively. From an outfield point of view, I feel we’re still a couple short.

“Clayts (Clayton Donaldson) and Vaughany have been very good at passing on their experience and helping the younger ones.

“The impact they’ve made both on and off the pitch is huge. It’s something I identified and wanted to bring in at the start of the summer.”

But Bowyer stressed he is no nearer to adding to his 10 recruits up to now.

“Not at the moment (we aren’t). We have to cut our cloth accordingly and that’s where we are at right now.”