In­ter­im So­ca War­riors coach An­gus Eve is ex­pect­ed to wait un­til the fi­nal hour per­mit­ted be­fore de­cid­ing on whether to name re­place­ments for the trio of Khaleem Hy­land, Tris­ton Hodge and Ju­dah Gar­cia.

This, as Eve and his squad pre­pares to face de­fend­ing Con­ca­caf Gold Cup cham­pi­ons Mex­i­co in their Pool A of the 2021 Gold Cup on Sat­ur­day night from 10 pm, three hours af­ter El Sal­vador and Cu­ra­cao, the two oth­er teams in the pool meet in the tour­na­ment open­er.

The So­ca War­riors booked their spot in the tour­na­ment’s group stage af­ter a nervy 8-7 penal­ty shoot-out vic­to­ry over French Guiana at the DRV PNK Sta­di­um, Flori­da on Tues­day af­ter a 1-1 draw at the end of the 90 min­utes reg­u­la­tion time.

Goal­keep­er Nick­las Fren­derup was the hero for the So­ca War­riors sav­ing the penal­ty at­tempt of Kevin Ri­mane spot-kick be­fore De­fence Force vet­er­an and for­mer T&T Un­der-17 and U-20 World Cup play­er Cur­tis Gon­za­les slot­ted home the win­ning penal­ty for his team.

But the win for the 49-year-old Eve, who has been at the helm of the team for on­ly three weeks af­ter the sack­ing of Eng­lish­man Ter­ry Fen­wick fol­low­ing the team’s failed World Cup qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign, may have come at a cost as the trio of cap­tain Hy­land, Gar­cia and Hodge all picked up mus­cu­lar in­juries in the match and had to be re­placed and are now in a race against time to re­cov­er for the group stage.

Eve and his med­ical staff have been do­ing cru­cial as­sess­ments of the play­ers since Tues­day and will Fri­day con­firm whether he will have to bring in any play­ers as re­place­ments.

The for­mer na­tion­al mid­field­er, turned coach, trav­elled to the tour­na­ment with a 26-man squad in­stead of the re­quired 23-man ros­ter, say­ing the three ad­di­tion­al play­ers were to be used in sit­u­a­tions where in­juries or ill­ness may take place.

But that was trimmed to 25 when In­ter Mi­a­mi FC winger Jo­evin Jones sus­tained a sea­son-end­ing in­jury dur­ing a US Ma­jor League Soc­cer match and was forced to with­draw from the Gold Cup.

Two play­ers who are avail­able to Eve at his quick dis­pos­al are de­fend­er mid­field­ers Michel Poon-Angeron and Mo­lik Khan who trav­elled as part of the 26 but have not fea­tured in ei­ther the 6-1 pre­lim­i­nary round open­ing win over Montser­att on Sat­ur­day last or the vic­to­ry over French Guiana while de­fend­ers Le­land Archer and Mekeil Williams, who are both based in the US with Unit­ed Soc­cer League clubs could al­so come in for se­lec­tion, and Cana­da-based pair, Akeem Gar­cia and An­dre Ram­per­sad as well as Eng­land-born strik­er Daniel Phillips of Wat­ford.

An­oth­er con­cern for Eve head­ing in­to his open­ing match against the Mex­i­cans who trashed Nige­ria 4-0 in their last warm-up in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly on Sat­ur­day is the num­ber of play­ers al­ready on yel­low cards.

It must be not­ed that the manda­to­ry rule that drops yel­low cards picked up by play­ers when they are mov­ing from one stage of a tour­na­ment to an­oth­er, is not be­ing used by CON­CA­CAF or­gan­is­ers.

This means play­ers who picked up yel­low cards for T&T in the qual­i­fy­ing rounds, will move in­to the group phase with it.

The play­ers cross­ing over with the cards are Ne­veal Hack­shaw and Hy­land from the Montser­rat af­fair, and Gon­za­les and de­fend­er Aubrey David from the French Guiana match.

With re­gards to the cards Eve said af­ter the French Guiana win, "It's a bit un­fair be­cause it's a dif­fer­ent phase, it's the qual­i­fy­ing phase go­ing in­to the group stage, and at most tour­na­ments in the world, the cards don't car­ry over like that, from qual­i­fy­ing to the group stage."

The T&T team ar­rived in Dal­las via a Con­ca­caf char­ter on Wednes­day af­ter­noon and trained at 8 pm TT Time (7 pm lo­cal) at the Toy­ota Sta­di­um in Frisco on Thurs­day.

On Fri­day, the of­fi­cial walk-through will take place at 7pm at the AT&T Sta­di­um, venue for Sat­ur­day’s Gold Cup group match ver­sus Mex­i­co.

T&T will train Fri­day evening at the Toy­ota Sta­di­um where Cu­ra­cao takes on El Sal­vador on Sat­ur­day in the oth­er group match.