KEY duo Nile Ranger and Ben Coker were both forced to miss Southend United’s 1-0 win against Bury.

Ranger had been expected to start alongside Simon Cox in attack.

But Blues boss Phil Brown was unable to call on the striker after he dropped out with a hamstring problem.

“Nile tweaked his hamstring at Shrewsbury last weekend,” said Brown.

“We had been hoping he would be OK to play and, at one point, we were confident it was going to happen.

“But Nile declared himself unfit on Wednesday having trained fully all week up until that point.

“He felt his hamstring was too tight to be able to play and that it would have been too much of a risk.”

Marc-Antoine Fortune was therefore restored to the starting line-up for the first time since lining up against Bristol Rovers in mid-March.

And Brown was also unable to call upon left-back Ben Coker, who again missed out with a knee problem.

Coker had missed the previous five games with the injury he sustained in training ahead of the clash with Bolton Wanderers earlier this month.

But, despite telling Echosport he was ‘pretty confident’ of being able to take on the Shakers, Coker was forced to watch the game from the sidelines after deciding it would have been too much of a risk to return to the action.

“Ben Coker trained at 75 per cent on Saturday but when it came to naming the team he didn’t feel he would be able to do justice to his team-mates,” explained Brown.

“It was a late decision and it probably wasn’t made until about 35 minutes into our very last training session before the game but Ben was still feeling it and couldn’t play.”