PAUL Cox is keeping his fingers crossed he has Adi Yussuf back in action at Dover tomorrow as his Barrow AFC squad gets thinner and thinner.

Cox had just 17 men available for the trip to Solihull Moors on Tuesday – reserve goalkeeper Sam Ramsbottom was the man not included in the match-day squad – and has now lost defender Jimmy Dunne to suspension.

Dunne watched from the stands after his dismissal at Damson Park as Barrow saw a two-goal lead turned into a 3-2 deficit before Harry Panayiotou’s late penalty earned a share of the spoils.

He was sat next to Yussuf, who was not risked because of a tight hamstring, and who Cox rates as “50-50” for the trip to the Crabble to take on a Dover side sitting pretty in third after a third win from four games when they beat Halifax 2-1 in midweek.

Yussuf’s return would be a major boost, not just because of his goal-scoring ability, but also given his absence would leave Cox with the bare 16 for the longest trip of the season. But the AFC boss is keeping his chin up and says he will work with whoever is available.

“We had 17 players going into Tuesday’s game,” said Cox, who is without Byron Harrison, David Fitzpatrick, Joel Dixon and Andy Parry through injury. “It will be nice to get some back, but we will just soldier on.

“I’ll work as hard as I can with the players I have got for Saturday who are available. Whatever players are available, we will go down there and give it our best shot.”

He added yesterday: “Adi Yussuf is 50-50. We will know more in the next 48 hours but we are hoping he will be fit. At the moment, we’ve only got 14 fit outfield players. We’ve just got to get on with it and hope to get some of the boys back quickly.”

Cox knows results in the National League have already shown that any team can beat any other in the division, and he will have that in mind for the trip to Dover.

It was there last season that, following a defeat on this corresponding weekend, he was confronted by angry travelling supporters, but there is the potential for better this time round.

The AFC boss added: “It’s a league where, on any given day, anyone can beat each other. What we have to do is learn from 45 minutes of football on Tuesday night and take that into the games that are coming up. In four games, we have probably not played well for two halves, and I think the boys need to be applauded for that as we move on to Saturday, which is going to be a really tough game.”

If Barrow are to take the three points tomorrow, they will need to show a better mentality then they displayed when reduced to 10 men at Solihull.

Cox felt it took too long for the side to get back on an even keel, but recognises this was always going to happen at some point with a young side new to each other.

“We need to improve in terms of the facets of our game where it doesn’t go our way,” he said. “A decision didn’t go our way on Tuesday night, and for 20 minutes it looked as though we were arguing about it rather than just getting on with it; keeping our shape, keeping our composure, keeping a clean sheet.

“Saying that, I knew these problems would keep happening because of the youthfulness of the group and the understating of each other. We have said this is a learning curve – we went away from home, we got a point, but the boys were disappointed after the first half that we didn’t get three.

“The one thing I know about these boys is that they know how to fight and they know how to work hard.

“What we need to do is have an understanding of game-management, and for 20 minutes after we lost Jimmy on Tuesday we lost our game-management – the ability to close a game down, the ability to keep a clean sheet. These are all the learning curves we need to go through.

“The sooner we do that – because we will have nights like Tuesday – the better. It’s going to be a long, long season, and we need to have an understanding of closing games down, especially when you are away from home and 2-0 up. We should have won that game 2-0, and I would have been happy with that.

“Sometimes, we relaxed a little bit, and sometimes we over-exposed ourselves when, realistically, you just play the game out for 45 minutes.”