Pelly's ever-present run ended against Dale

The 24-year-old hadn’t missed a minute of Town’s League One campaign, playing all 34 matches, but was replaced by Dan Potts with 16 minutes to go during the 2-0 win over Rochdale.

When asked if Mpanzu had been disappointed to see his run ended, boss Mick Harford said: “I don’t know, we never thought about that, we brought him off for certain reasons.

“We wanted to put Pottsy into left back as we knew they were going to go back to front.

“They put Calvin Andrew on, we knew they were going to be very direct and Dan is probably one of our best headers in the team.

“So we did that for that reason, no other reason whatsoever and JJ (James Justin) had good legs and energy in midfield.

"We know Pelly’s played a hell of a lot of games in the last 12 months, and we just wanted a bit of fresh legs in there.

“No-one’s fitter than JJ and he went in there and I thought he was excellent, in terms of getting on second balls and doing a good job for us.”

Team-mate Danny Hylton revealed it was a shock to see the number 17 up on the assistant referee's board, adding: "I couldn’t believe it, I thought it was me, so I started walking over!

"Pelly never comes off, he's never injured, ever present, always getting on the ball, always making things tick for us.

"I couldn’t believe it, but he deserves his rest.

"We were 1-0 up, he can sit down and enjoy the last 10 minutes, as I'm sure that won’t happen too many more times."