“I want to start with Stuart Dallas. He had a successful surgery, it was a long surgery – five and a half hours. But they believe that the outcome was very positive and they say it’ll be a long recovery, but believe it will be a full recovery. He has had something like 400-500 messages from fans, family and friends. We know that he’s loved and I think that this moment proved that more than anything. I don’t want to speak for Stuart but I’ve heard that he’s been very appreciative of so many people reaching out and extending their concerns and love towards him. We all hope the absolute best for Stuart and we hope is soon pain free and back here in the training centre so we can really start his recovery. Then on the other injury front Patrick has been on the pitch, so we remain cautiously optimistic with that. Tyler, Adam and Cry are all moving in the right direction. Liam Cooper trained today, Diego trained today so we should have, other than those 4/5 guys, a full complement of players.”
About Stuart Dallas, you said a long recovery, we talking a year/18 months, that kind of duration and also how much of what he’s going through is that going to be an incentive for the other lads to make sure that he’s a Premier League player?
I think we can safely say it’ll be six months but it could be longer and I don’t think anyone wants to rush him. I think the bone has to heal, and then they have to look at all the things like the articular cartilage, the meniscus which everything seems to be relatively intact. The ACL is intact, I’m not a doctor but a lot of the main structure of the knee is in place and it’s just got to heal over time. And we all know Stuart’s such a big part of the group, he’s such a fantastic person and player. I think he had the ongoing record for most consecutive matches so I think he’s an iron man. It’s motivation for us but more importantly it’s an indicator for the fact Stuart will be back stronger than ever.”
