Full back Mark Kennedy faces a race to be fit for Cardiff City's Championship match at Crystal Palace.
Manager Dave Jones said ahead of the match: "I'm not sure about Mark. He trained on Thursday and felt very sore. So we'll check him again today, and he'll maybe have an injection to deaden the pain a little bit. We'll look at the situation.
"But he's probably the only one of the injured players who might come back. The others might be for Tuesday or next weekend.
"Kelvin Etuhu is back with us now but it's a matter of getting him playing games and up to match fitness, and that's the hardest thing.We'd got him to that stage last time he was here and then he did his ankle, which set him back for a while, then he was misdiagnosed, and he was off a little bit longer.
"When the doom and gloomers were about a few weeks ago, I did say that once injured players come back, you'd see us get more consistent.
"I wouldn't say the players coming back are fresher, but they've got more hunger because they want to play football. The problem is that because they've been out so long they need to get match fit. You can't recreate match conditions in training or in reserve games. It's impossible.
"When you look at Steve McPhail, who's coming back to full fitness, it's taken him three or four games to get to that level."
Kennedy damaged his ribs in Sunday's 3-1 win over Watford and in terms of recovery is ahead of Anthony Gerrard (calf) and Kevin McNaughton (thigh).
So Dave looks set to stick with the central defensive partnership of Darcy Blake and Gabor Gyepes, with Tony Capaldi, who started Tuesday's 1-1 draw with Sheffield United, bidding to continue at left back if Sparky doesn't make it.
Dave also has to work on his attacking formation, with skipper Jay Bothroyd suspended for two games after he picked up his tenth yellow card of the season on Tuesday.
Palace have been docked 10 points after going into administration, and Dave said: "They have been very unlucky because they were trying to challenge for a play-off spot and all of a sudden they're struggling to stay in the division.
"Neil Warnock was doing a fantastic job and got the rug pulled from under him. Now Paul Hart has gone in there and he's fighting for his life. But we can't worry about anyone else at this level because you could lose focus on what you're trying to do.
"The battle for the play-offs will probably go to the final day. Forest appear to have cemented themselves into third spot for the play-offs and the other three are up for grabs. Everybody was saying that only sixth spot was available, but there'll be three places to fight over.
"The three clubs who are now in those places still need to get the points to make certain of making the play-offs, while the chasing pack will believe they can catch up if the others falter.
"It's up to us to keep it going and make sure we get one of these play-off places.
"Nobody's out of reach mathematically. The top two could hit a bad patch, and it's not impossible to catch them, but I would think they are the two that will be promoted automatically."
