ANDY Preece is hoping Worcester City's player shortage does not come back to haunt them.

With two games remaining, City still have an outside chance of making the Nationwide North play-offs.

Saturday's 2-1 victory against Worksop Town left Preece's team four points adrift of a top-five berth but they can still defy the odds if they beat Hucknall and Harrogate and results go their way.

However, Shabir Khan looks set to miss the last two games with a hamstring injury after pulling up in agony 69 minutes into the Worksop match.

His replacement, Chris Smith, is still not 100 per cent fit following an ankle problem and George Clegg was only on the bench at the weekend.

To make matters worse, with the perceived belief of being out of contention, Justin Thompson has completed his switch to the Portland Timbers and assistant boss Andy Morrison has left the club.

Manager Preece said: "Although we are just losing one or two players I think we can probably just about get through it until the end of the season. If we get in the play-offs it might be a struggle but I think we will be OK and we can also call Gary Walker back at any time as well.

"It looks like Shabir's done his hamstring so that will be him for the season but hopefully Chris Smith and George Clegg, with another week's rest, will be OK."

Striker Craig Wilding scored both goals against Worksop as City made it 11 matches unbeaten at St George's Lane.

Preece said: "We thoroughly deserved to win the game but we nearly shot ourselves in the foot which sums our season up when we've been dominating games and conceded a poor goal that costs us points."

He added: "We still want to finish as high as possible. I think that win will guarantee that we finish in the top half of the league."

Paul Carty's testimonial takes place at St George's Lane tomorrow night (7.45pm) between a City XI and Bromsgrove Rovers XI.