Nahki Wells was a late replacement on the Bristol City bench on Wednesday night against Millwall after suffering a pulled groin during the warm-up.

Wells was one of four City players who picked up an injury on the night, with assistant manager Curtis Fleming, in charge of the team in the absence of manager Nigel Pearson who had a positive Covid test, forced to make a late replacement for Wells on the bench.

Wells was reported to have felt a twinge while warming up and was replaced as a substitute by Callum O’Dowda, who has only just returned from injury himself.

Wells was still listed as one of the subs when O’Dowda made an appearance off the bench in the 55th minute for Jay Dasilva, who had an ankle injury.

"It was just a passing drill at the start of the warm-up. He's [Wells] just twisted a little bit and felt uncomfortable," Fleming explained of Wells’s injury.

"It's one of them where it's someone that you know you would have loved to throw on tonight. And he would have made a huge difference for us, as he has in every game that he's come on.

"I was disappointed but we can't take a chance. He could have come on and gone straight off."

City made their first substitution because of injury in the 31st minute when defender Nathan Baker, who picked up a heel injury in the 1-1 draw against Fulham on the weekend, was forced off and replaced by Cam Pring.

City suffered a 1-0 loss, their first defeat in six matches.

“I said to the guys we can't feel sorry about that,” Fleming said as he looks ahead to tomorrow’s match with Peterborough.

"Why are we all thinking of this 90 minutes? Let's think about what people's expectations of us was and we've got that trust in this group. We go again and there are 36 games left. We can't start feeling sorry for ourselves.

"We made more changes than we wanted to do, but at the end of the day you've got to do them and you have to adapt."

Fleming said it is too early to know if Wells and the other injured players would return for the Peterborough trip. Forward Antoine Semenyo and midfielder Han-Noah Massengo also missed the Millwall match.

Peterborough are City's last fixture before the next international break, with Bournemouth, second in the Championship, then visiting Ashton Gate on October 16.