Tyler Morton looks set to be the player to profit from the unfortunate injury to John Buckley.

Buckley had been preferred alongside captain Lewis Travis for the previous five matches, with Morton used off the bench in three of them.

The Liverpool loanee had previously enjoyed a near perfect record, with 24 starts out of 26 matches from the end of August until the start of last month.

Head coach Jon Dahl Tomasson says the 20-year-old has shown his ‘intelligence’ in his performances which have kept him in the team.

However, he feels Morton will benefit from his spell out, a fate that every member in the squad has faced at some point of the season.

Tomasson has looked to manage his squad as he best he can throughout the season, and despite his lack of recent Championship starts, Morton hasn’t been without minutes.

He has played twice for the Under-21s as well as impressing in the FA Cup tie at Leicester City last month.

The midfielder himself conceded he had played more than he imaged he would after joining on a season-long loan from the Premier League club in what was his first extended taste of regular senior football.

Asked if he feels Morton will benefit from that break, Tomasson said: “I think so, yeah.

“It was needed that rest.

“You saw that when he played away at Leicester, the first 75 minutes he was excellent and then he got a little bit tired at the end.

“When a young player suddenly plays at this intensity in this great league it costs a lot of energy.

“The intensity is like that all the team during the season and it’s tough.

“There aren’t many players who are robust enough to play all of these games and if you have never tried it before then you are learning on the job in that way.

“He had a great education, he wants to learn and develop but you can see that he’s a very intelligent player coming through at Liverpool.”

Only four players, including central midfielder Travis, have played more Championship minutes than Morton who has started 24 of the 36 league matches.

Jake Garrett made his first Championship appearance since starting the 4-0 defeat at Rotherham United on January 14 when coming off the bench at Stoke City, while Adam Wharton, whose last appearance came on New Year’s Day, is now back available after a spell out injured.

Joe Rankin-Costello, who has been impressing at right back, also has experience of playing in central midfield, so Tomasson does still have options despite the injury blow to Buckley.

On finalising his selection, he said: “We always look to opponents, look at the form of our players and what I want to see in games and then I select players.

“I always select players based upon where the spaces will be, not formations, but space is important.

“If you control the space you control the game in my head.

“We of course, like we have done the whole season, look at what we need to do for each game.

“We need to use the squad during this season as I've said many times.

"That means players need a rest, Morton was a good example of that.

“He'd never played so many games at this high level, it's not Under-21s football.

"Every player has been more or less out of the squad and not playing because we need to use everybody."