BURNLEY are waiting on scans of Ashley Barnes’ hamstring strain, with boss Sean Dyche revealing a return to action is ‘not imminent’ for the striker.

Barnes limped out of the Clarets’ 3-1 victory at Bradford on Saturday and has since undergone scans to determine the extent of the problem.

MORE TOP STORIES:

A timescale has not yet been placed on the 26-year-old’s return, but Lukas Jutkiewicz, who replaced Barnes at Valley Parade and then also came off with a hamstring niggle, is closer to action.

Both players have recently returned from cruciate knee ligament injuries and saw pre-season as vital in building up their fitness to hit the ground running come the start of the Premier League campaign on August 13.

Barnes returned to action in April after a long spell on the sidelines but was targeting a full pre-season to return to his best levels of fitness ahead of the visit of Swansea to Turf Moor on the opening day of the season.

But his participation in that game could now be in doubt with Burnley unsure on exactly how long he will be out for.

“Barnesy we’re just waiting to see how long but he’s not imminent. We’re not sure how long, it’s a hamstring strain but a slightly different one and a smaller muscle in the hamstring, so we’ve had that scanned,” said Dyche.

“It’s nothing untoward but it could be a bit of time yet.

“Juke is very close, that was more of a sensible call on that one.

“We’ll have to see what the physios say on Barnesy, it’s still in the early stages after settling down from the weekend.”

David Jones and Fredrik Ulvestad also missed out at the Macron Stadium, with the midfield duo reporting ill earlier in the day.

Both players were sent home from Gawthorpe as a result to avoid the bug spreading, and young midfielder Brad Jackson was called into the matchday squad at Bolton to cover.

“Jonah and Freddie have had a bit of a bug so they got off,” said Dyche. “We don’t want that spreading through the camp so we got them off as quick as we could.

“They would have both figured actually but we had to change that.”