Nahki Wells has the weekend off because he is ineligible to play for Huddersfield Town today in the fourth round of the FA Cup against Charlton Athletic.

The Bermuda striker is cup-tied, having played for Bradford City in a 3-0 first-round defeat by Rotherham United last November. Huddersfield’s other new striker, Joe Lolley, is also ineligible after he appeared for Kidderminster Harriers, of the Skrill Premier, who hope to continue their fairytale run when they face Sunderland at the Stadium of Light. Lolley scored Kidderminster’s winner in the third-round replay against Peterborough United.

Wells has had a promising start with Huddersfield in the Sky Bet Championship, scoring a goal in each of his first two appearances, including a last-minute winner against Millwall on his debut, to take his tally for the season to 17.

Huddersfield also have a couple of injury concerns before today’s match, with forward Martin Paterson and defender Joel Lynch doubtful with thigh and groin injuries respectively. James Vaughan, the club’s leading scorer, could return to the starting line-up after appearing as a second-half substitute in the loss away to Queens Park Rangers last weekend. He had been out for five games with an ankle injury.

Peter Clarke, the club captain who has been sidelined since early November, is back in training after knee surgery.

Wells would hope to be back involved on Tuesday when Huddersfield make the long journey to the South Coast to face Bournemouth in the Championship.

Meanwhile, Phil Parkinson, the Bradford manager, says that his side’s loss of momentum is down to the disruption to the strike partnership of Wells and James Hanson. Bradford have struggled to come to grips with the loss of their top scorer and have slipped to thirteenth in League One after early promise among the promotion-chasing teams.

However, they went into a slump when Wells was sidelined with a ligament injury, losing three and drawing one of the four games that he missed. After that they drew five of their next six league matches, followed by three losses and three more draws as Wells was sidelined with a hamstring injury towards the end of last month and then was sold to Huddersfield for more than £1.3 million in this transfer window.

“We’ve had a period where we’ve played well and drawn a lot of games, but I don’t think we’ve had the front two functioning as we would have liked,” Parkinson said.

“Ultimately in football, the strikers are so important and we haven’t had our front two playing as well over the last couple of months.”