Unlucky Eddie Johnson will miss City's next two games after gashing his shin at Wrexham.

Johnson, just over a back injury, needed seven stitches in the wound, which he suffered in his first outing for 11 weeks.

The midfielder left the 1-1 draw on a stretcher and Stuart McCall admitted his absence is another bitter blow.

"You feel for Eddie because he's just got back from being out a long time and I thought he looked good," he said. "The ball just dropped for him in the box and their lad got a foot in and made a decent block.

"It's a bad gash and looked a real mess afterwards. We're probably looking at a minimum of ten days because the stitches need to stay in for a week.

"I spoke to Eddie later and he said it was throbbing a little bit. But he's desperate to play and wants to have the stitches taken out as soon as possible so hopefully he'll be back soon."

With Peter Thorne missing, McCall used a five-man midfield against the struggling Welsh side, with Barry Conlon the only striker. But the City boss denied that it was a negative move.

"We'd looked at how Wrexham set up with three big centre halves and three six-footers in the middle of the park, leaving their wing-backs - who are expected to be full backs and wingers.

"When the wing-backs pushed on, we wanted to leave Omar Daley and Joe Colbeck in advanced areas so we were three against three with their centre halves.

"The gameplan wasn't to go one up front but to isolate the left and right centre halves who would hate it against the pace of our wingers. But because their wing-backs didn't bomb on, we didn't get that situation as much as we'd like.

"It wasn't a frustrating tactic but a positive one. At MK Dons and Peterborough we lined up like that to keep it tight because they are good sides, but we thought this was the best way to really get at Wrexham and occasionally it did happen.

"Possession-wise I thought we dominated the play without creating lots of chances. Unfortunately the ball in the final third of the pitch wasn't good enough."

Kyle Nix fired his second goal in a week, and sixth of the season, as City came from behind to keep up their unbeaten January.

McCall added: "Wrexham had just beaten MK Dons and then they went 1-0 up with the crowd behind them, so it was good to come back.

"I felt at half-time that if we scored the next goal, we would go on and win it. I thought we controlled things but couldn't capitalise which is disappointing."

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