Forest Green Rovers' head of medical services Ian Weston says that Charlie Cooper is fortunate not to have done more damage after the midfielder was ruled out for a minimum of six weeks.

The 20-year-old hobbled from the Ricoh Arena pitch in the second half of Tuesday’s clash with Coventry City following a first-half tackle by Rod McDonald.

Despite playing on through the pain, he required a scan in Cheltenham yesterday before seeing a knee specialist where it was revealed that he suffered a hyper-extension of his left knee, as well as bruising to the bone.

Cooper will be out for six weeks but Weston says his spirits are high and is backing the young midfielder to come back stronger.

“Quite a lot of people have seen the picture of the tackle and it looks bad. When a knee goes into a position it shouldn’t go in you worry about ligament damage but he has been fortunate,” he said.

“There’s been a lot of trauma to the knee joint itself and the ligaments have all been stretched to their limit.

“The main prognosis is six weeks based on the bone bruising.

“His foot was rotated a little bit. He has been fortunate because if he’s foot was fixed we would have been looking at a very serious injury.

“Charlie has been positive already, we’ve spoken to him and said he is going to comeback and to use this six weeks to condition and to come back stronger all over physically.”

Meanwhile, defender Manny Monthe is close to a return to the squad after fracturing his jaw. Elsewhere, Harry Pickering has been recalled from his loan spell at Shortwood United to cover for the injured Sam Russell and will be on the bench at Stevenage today.

“Manny picked up a very small fracture in training just over three weeks ago but he has now been given the all clear to resume full training which he did yesterday,” added Weston.

“Unfortunately, in training on Friday, Sam Russell picked up a grade one hamstring strain which is probably going to keep him out for around 10 days.”