Chris Beech says Danny Devine is being given more time to ensure he is fully fit after his recent return from injury.

Devine is training with the Carlisle United squad but is unlikely to be involved at Crawley this weekend.

The former Bradford midfielder recently returned from a pre-season muscle injury to play in last week’s Papa John’s Trophy game against Hartlepool.

The versatile player, who started the game at right-back, went off in the second half after feeling some discomfort and head coach Beech said it is vital United handle the situation carefully.

“It’s more precautionary with Danny because he was out for quite some time,” he said.

“The physios tend to grade this type of thing these days. It’s a grade one, which is three to seven days, but basically it’s a bit of fatigue and a bit of an uncomfortable feeling within what he had previously.

“It’s nothing like what happened last time, and he should be on the training pitch today and tomorrow, but in terms of being available to play I think we’ll have to give him extra time on top of that time, to make sure he’s feeling good.

“To be fair that’s what we did last time, it’s just that these things can happen.”

Beech otherwise appears to have all his players available for this weekend’s long trip to Sussex.

The United boss said he has this week subjected players to a “mini pre-season” designed to help certain individuals, including new signings, get up to speed fitness-wise.

He said: “We’ve had like a mini pre-season on Monday-Tuesday. The boys trained very hard – they might have got a little bit of a shock after the weekend’s result [the 2-1 win over Salford] but it was important to do that.

“Zach Clough’s missed a few weeks, Jordan Gibson and Jonathan Dinzeyi have joined us, Brad Young, and people like Lewi Bell haven’t had too much game time.

“Having no game [in midweek] gave us an opportunity to do a bit more. A couple of the new lads were interviewed this week and they spoke about the fact that we’re training so fast it’s taken them by surprise a little bit.

“It’s not a pre-season type week, but it’s definitely been harder because we had that chance to work people who have all missed little bits along the way. It’s been really good.”

Beech added that young striker Sam Fishburn suffered a dead leg in his latest loan outing for Lancaster City this week.