Turning up for training this morning feels like making a funeral march. I knew selecting Kyle Naughton was a risk in the FA Cup tie against Portsmouth, I just knew it. I had planned to only play him for a half hour before replacing him with young Mael Davies.
Kyle took a big hit from James Weir, such a forceful challenge that both players could not continue. Then later on Luciano Narsingh felt the force of a tackle by Tottenham loanee Kyle Walker-Peters and had to bring on Wayne Routledge a lot sooner than I hoped.
Routledge did make it to the end of the game without much problem but I’m extremely reluctant to even check in with our medical staff.
Let’s run through the list of injuries we have.
- Angel Rangel is out for another 2-4 weeks with a hip injury.
- Renato Sanches is out for another 6 days-2 weeks with sprained ankle ligaments.
- Wayne Routledge is scheduled to complete rehabilitation from a torn hamstring in 3 days.
- Leroy Fer is scheduled to complete rehabilitation from a twisted knee in 2 days.
- Kyle Naughton will be out for 2-3 months due to a dislocated shoulder.
- Luciano Narsingh will be out for 3-4 weeks with a twisted ankle.
In addition, there are several warnings about other players.
As a result, I’ve chosen to give the players an extra days rest before a match. The workload is already fairly light so I’m hoping that the players come through it. It is alarming to see that Alfie Mawson and Martin Olsson are ranked as ‘very high’ for injury susceptibility and both have recurring injuries.
This is all forgetting the obvious, that we did progress from the FA Cup fifth round. Portsmouth were tough opposition but in the end the quality told with Tammy Abraham notching a hat-trick, which means he has now scored 14 goals and becomes our top scorer once again.
The stats are all good in our favour, the number of shots off target is a concern but the strikers are clearly all getting in the right positions, which I’ll take.
Tonight there is the FA Cup sixth round/quarter final draw, which will receive live coverage on @TheHigherTempo so get on twitter from 7pm and we’ll see who we draw.
