The length of Matt Fish’s injury absence will become clearer this week.

Fish sees a specialist on Monday and is due for a knee operation on Tuesday.

He requires surgery after snapping his anterior cruciate ligament last week against Colchester, just two minutes into the new season.

Boss Martin Allen said: “Matt is seeing the consultant on Monday at 8.30am and then he’s having the operation on Tuesday afternoon.

“I will hopefully have more information from the consultant on the state of play on Monday. I’m sure that operation will be fine.”

Gillingham signed QPR’s Michael Harriman last week as cover for Fish but only on an initial 28-day loan.

Fish is expected to be absent for several months but Allen isn’t rushing into talks on extending Harriman’s loan deal