Gallagher, Manhoef, Wilmot – Stoke City injury news as Mark Robins looks to clear treatment room
Gallagher, Manhoef, Wilmot – Stoke City injury news as Mark Robins looks to clear treatment room
Stoke City are hoping a crowded treatment room will start to empty this month to give Mark Robins half-a-dozen more options as he tries to pull the team away from the wrong end of the Championship.
Robins has yet been able to call on Eric Bocat, Ben Gibson, Jordan Thompson, Ben Pearson, Bosun Lawal and Million Manhoef to start a game since being appointed manager on New Year’s Day. He lost Sam Gallagher in his first game in charge too, Sol Sidibe has since been ruled out, Ben Wilmot has missed the last two, Lewis Baker the last one with illness and Lynden Gooch limped off in the first half. Ryan Mmaee has returned to Stoke from loan while recovering from a hamstring problem too.
Stoke have still gone on a run of three wins, four draws and one defeat since Boxing Day. Specific updates are difficult because Robins is keen not to put certain dates on comebacks but the expectation that key players will start to come back sooner rather than later must have influenced a decision not to panic at the end of the transfer window.
Robins explained about his injury thinking recently: “Generally what happens now we say, ‘That’s that and it’s going to be that’ and I really don’t like it because it puts a thing in the player’s mind that it’s going to be four to six weeks so it’ll be four to six weeks. Rather than doing that, you know there is a certain amount of time it will take to heal and then you can manage the pain or how much you’re putting yourself at risk of another injury or a reinjury.
“I don’t like just saying, ‘It’s going to be this,’ because if they can shave some time off it, brilliant for everybody. Players miss playing and we need people fit. We’ve got to work our socks off to get them back and be available for us as often as they possibly can.”
Lawal is stepping up his fitness towards the end of a long road back from a stress fracture of his lower back picked up in the medical when he signed from Celtic in the summer. Medics in the summer had hoped he could be up and running within four weeks but in the end he had to rest for three months and scheduling haven’t been kind over the winter.
He has needed to play minutes for the under-21s to try to get his sharpness back but they didn’t have a game between mid-December and mid-January and Lawal has also had to take a place on the first team bench at times too because of other injuries. Still, he came through 60 minutes for the 21s last week and 70 this week. He could feature against Cardiff in the FA Cup fourth round on Saturday.
Pearson is having to be managed delicately too as he comes through the final stages of 10 months on the sidelines due to hamstring injuries. He has played 45 minutes twice for the 21s as he tries to trust his body again after so long out.
“He feels different now,” said Robins last week. “You know yourself when you’re feeling right. He feels right and hopefully now we can get him back sooner rather than later. That’ll be down, to a degree, down to Ben and how he is mentally and physically.”
Wilmot is hoping to be back in mid-February after picking up a soft tissue injury in his foot in the latter stages of a defeat at Portsmouth while Manhoef, who picked up a knee injury on December 14, is optimistic he can join in around a similar time, the same as Thompson, who is recovering from a hernia operation. Gallagher, who picked up a hamstring injury against Plymouth on January 4, shouldn’t be too long after that but will clearly have to be handled carefully.
Robins said last month:“I’ve got to look at how we can use him in games differently, slightly differently, and I think we can work together to maximise his time on the pitch because it’s been really stop-start. He’s a really powerful athlete and sometimes you look at him and think he’s too powerful for those explosive movements, it’s damaging the muscle because he’s so powerful.”
Club captain Gibson has been out with illness and injury since Boxing Day but was back on the bench at Hull while Gooch is hoping not to be derailed for too long by the calf injury he sustained.
Bocat still had a fair bit of rehabilitation to go on the calf injury which forced him out of the Plymouth game during the warm-up and Sidibe has a pars back injury that will need time to heal. Mmaee is expected to be laid low for four to six weeks but he hasn’t played a competitive game since he led the line for Stoke at Plymouth in August.
“I’m looking forward to making sure that we’ve got enough to make changes that are going to impact the game in a positive way,” said Robins a couple of weeks ago.
“Players are all receptive to that but when you’re in that period when you’ve got players coming back from injuries or longer term injuries it does take a little bit of time so they’ve got to be patient, we’ve got to be patient and not rush them back because if they’re not quite ready it will have a detrimental effect moving down the line.
“There’s a fine balancing act. It’s not straightforward where you’re just picking a team, it’s not Championship Manager when you’re sitting on a computer and just picking people. You’ve got real people that need nurturing, that need help, that need support, that need to be worked hard and given information that you can utilise in the best way they can. It’s not a simple thing, it’s quite complex.”
Leave a Reply