Jack Payne knee injury update - could return against Salford City

The 27-year-old is continuing his rehabilitation on a knee injury picked up against Northampton Town on New Year's Day.

An expected return date has never been disclosed by Garner, but the weekend's game will mark almost two months since Payne last played for Swindon.

Payne and Ben Gladwin will miss Tuesday night's League Two fixture at home to Walsall while Garner confirmed Dion Conroy should be back in contention following a niggling Achilles injury.

The Town boss said: "Dion trained fully on Sunday, so we'll see how he is today but I don't see that being a problem - he should be fine.

"Jack Payne built up a bit more on Sunday, which was great to see, and it's just a case of taking it day by day with him now and trying to get him over these last few hurdles so that he's ready to play again.

"I think there's a chance (he could be back against Salford) but I don't like to put too much on it. It's literally a day-to-day process now."

Payne has been back in group training for almost two weeks now, but Garner said the midfielder remains under constant analysis from the medical team in a bid to minimise the risk of a set-back.

Garner explained: "With the type of injury it is, you get fully recovered until the point where it's a case of seeing how the knee reacts in certain moments.

"He's fulfilling a criteria and working through things with our sports science team, but then he's got to do that within training sessions now and tick those boxes.

"It was a really positive day for him on Sunday, hopefully we can keep taking those steps and making progress. As soon as he is right and ready, then he will come back into the squad, no doubt.

"But we just need to make sure that we haven't done 98 per cent of the work and we cut the corner on the last two per cent which sets him back.

"We'll make sure that we get him all the way to 100 per cent so that when he comes back he is good to go."