DEFIANT boss Eddie Howe insists Cherries will not seek a hiding place behind their bumper injury list and declared: “We are going to have to cope.”

Howe’s best-laid plans have been thrown into disarray by a catalogue of sidelined stars with the club’s treacherous run of fortune showing no sign of abating.

Goalkeeper Artur Boruc pulled out of Saturday’s 5-1 defeat at Premier League leaders Manchester City with a thigh strain that was due to be assessed yesterday, while Howe revealed Marc Pugh’s omission from the starting XI had also been enforced by a rib injury.

The absence of those key figures can be added to an unfathomable roll call for the treatment table with record-signing Tyrone Mings, £7million winger Maxi Gradel, leading scorer Callum Wilson and captain Tommy Elphick out for the long term. Last season’s player of the year Harry Arter is thought to be on the road to recovery but has yet to feature this campaign.

But despite having seven first-team regulars ruled out, Howe has no intention of allowing that to become an excuse.

Asked how Cherries would get by, Howe said: “We are going to have to cope. I still believe the team and the squad we have is able to be competitive, despite the fact we have so many players out long term.

“We are not looking at that as an excuse or an issue. We have to try to find a way to make them competitive. With our full squad this is an incredibly tough task but even more so with the players we have out.”

Howe tweaked his system for the visit to the Etihad with Eunan O’Kane coming into central midfield in place of an out-and-out number 10.

“The change in shape wasn’t really a difficult decision,” he told the Daily Echo. “We were trying to get a little more solidity in the middle of the midfield.

“In terms of Marc Pugh missing out, he hadn’t trained in the international break because of a rib injury. In a sense, my team selection was forced upon me.”

Elaborating on Boruc’s complaint, Howe said: “Artur will have a scan and we’ll wait to see the extent of it. We hope, because he was pulled out before the game, that it is not serious damage but we’ll wait until the results.

“He has been away with Poland so we haven’t seen a great deal of him over the past two weeks and for him to pick up that injury in the warm-up, it’s another one we couldn’t really control but we’ll hopefully get him back into action very quickly."

  • For your Cherries match comment and more reaction from Eddie Howe, Steve Cook, Andrew Surman and Eunan O'Kane, plus the best of this weekend's Premier League action, pick up your copy of The Prem - our eight-page weekly pull out - in today's Echo.