Bath are set to be without number eight Dan du Preez for a "considerable amount of time" due to a torn hamstring.

The South African moved to Bath from Sale this summer and suffered the injury prior to their Champions Cup defeat by Montpellier last week.

"He unfortunately tore his hamstring on the Thursday before the game, which will rule him out for a considerable amount of time," head of rugby Johann van Graan said.

Bath have back-to-back Prem games away at Gloucester and Sale before the league takes a four-week break for the autumn internationals.

As well as missing Du Preez for the European encounter, Bath also were without back-row forward Miles Reid although Van Graan said he expects Reid to be back for the trip to Kingsholm.

"Miles was in training a bit earlier, he's got to go through his return to contact bits," he said. "We'll see by Thursday whether we're going to go with him or not."

However while Du Preez and Reid have been absent, academy graduate Arthur Green has started the past two games at number eight and has been in exceptional form, scoring three tries.

The 22-year-old has previously only started six Prem games for the club since his debut in 2024 and Van Graan said he had been "impressed".

"How good has he been?" Van Graan said. "Ball in hand, he's had some magic moments. There's a line that he ran, if you look at the high camera just before Ollie's [Lawrence] try, where he was moving sideways and backwards and he saw Finn [Russell], came and changed direction; he kept his feet perfectly.

"He hits the line and he's got tremendous feet and this ability to be in the right place at the right time. We saw that in the Northampton game and again the try that he scored that wasn't pre-planned, that was just a player that was ready to seize the opportunity.

"I've been very impressed with him, his biggest attribute is he's got a natural aptitude for the game."

While Bath travel to Kingsholm off the back of two losses, they have been boosted by the return of captain Ben Spencer, who made his fist start of the campaign against Montpellier.

The scrum-half had surgery on a long-standing shoulder issue over the summer and Van Graan said his presence back in the squad had provided a boost, particularly his partnership with fly-half Russell.

"I loved his voice [being] there the last week of training and I think a lot of things have just settled down," Van Graan said.

"His relationship with Finn, obviously they haven't had a lot of training time together and it'll take time for us to click but in terms of physically, Ben is in a good place. He's just short on game time so we'll keep building that over the next few weeks."

Spencer has been capped 21 times by England and came on as a replacement during their summer victory against Argentina.

But Van Graan added he did not know if the scrum-half would be ready to be selected for his country when the squad for next month's Nations Championship is announced shortly.

"Whether he'll be selected for the England slot or not I don't know, but he's certainly came through that game well," he added.