Joey Barton was delighted to reveal Bristol Rovers utility player Josh Grant has reached a significant milestone this week in his return from double knee surgery, stepping back on the training pitch for the first time in seven months.
The 24-year-old, who can play across the defence and midfield and was a member of the team that won promotion from League Two last season, has played just once for the Gas this season – a brief substitute appearance at Burton Albion in August – before being shut down to have operations on both knees to address longstanding issues with tendinitis.
Those struggles have hampered Grant throughout his time with the Gas, who he joined from Chelsea in 2020, much to the frustration of his manager, who rates him very highly in a variety of roles and Barton is happy to see him near the end of a brutal and "demoralising" road to recovery.
"Any player out there reading this will know, the worst thing is that gym, especially when it’s only you in there and you’re looking at the walls," Barton said. "Some of the high-tech places, if you’re lucky enough to go to places with a really good gym, they now build a glass window so you can look out onto the training pitch because they think that is aspirational for the injured players.
"I’m not sure who came up with that, but when you’re in their sitting on the bike or doing another gym session and following a programme and you look out and see everybody prancing around with balls, it can be soul-destroying, especially if the sun’s out. When the sun’s cracking flags and the pitches are good and you hear that noise, it can be so demoralising and it can depress you.
"Josh has had to put up with a lot of that in his career and he is only a young man. He’s had drastic operations to get to the root of his problems and we’ve got to be careful building him back up, but it must be such a nice feeling to be back out on the grass.
"You take it for granted when you’re fit, but when you’ve had a tough time with niggles and injuries and you’re in the gym, pfff. When you get out of it, it’s truly amazing."
Grant has made 64 appearances across three seasons, enduring a rollercoaster ride of relegation, promotion and several injury blows. He was in fine form last season playing as an attacking left-back, scoring three goals in 22 appearances before missing a large part of the run-in.
His contract with the Gas expires in June, although Barton has made no secret of his admiration of the player – he once said he was his "favourite" in the squad, so an offer of fresh terms is likely to be forthcoming.
Barton says he has seen an immediate boost in Grant's mood at The Quarters after moving to an individual training programme outside after spending the winter months rehabilitating in the gym.
"I’ve been watching Clarkson’s Farm and there was a bovine TB outbreak so they had to lock all the cows in and after a period they let them back out and the cows are all bucking," Barton said with a huge smile. "It’s because they haven’t been on the grass and players are the same, not getting bovine TB, but when they get back from injuries you see it in them.
"They are doing stuff that they don’t usually enjoy when you ask them to do it when they are fully fit, but because the novelty of just being out on the grass with the ball is lost sometimes when you’re in the gym.
"You can see in Josh, you can just see his mood has elevated because he’s back out there and hopefully that’s the last of his injuries because he’s a talented boy and it’s stopped his career from progressing, that’s for sure."
Rovers remain unsure when he will be back in action again. The timescale had always been for a pre-season return, but Barton cannot rule out the chance that he plays again before the end of this campaign.
"We’ll see," Barton said. "We can’t really pencil any of those boys in because they can have setbacks as we found with Jordan Rossiter. We were expecting Jordy to come back and he’s had multiple setbacks.
"We’ve got everything crossed for Josh and it would be lovely to see him (play), but if it means he just gets a free run at pre-season and he gets a period of football next year consistently, it will be worthwhile for him because he’s still only 24 and he’s such a talented player that it is frustrating to see him injured as much as he is and it must be incredibly frustrating for him and his family."
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