Roy Hodgson has suggested Michael Olise may not start for Crystal Palace against Liverpool on Saturday, after sports scientists warned him not to overwork the winger.
Olise suffered a serious hamstring injury while playing for France’s Under-21s on June 25, and only last month made his first appearance of the season for Palace.
But Olise has since played a full 90 minutes in each of the Eagles’s last three games, and the club’s medical team are concerned about the possibility of the 21-year-old re-injuring himself.
Hodgson said: “We have to be making a decision more about Olise. After almost four months out and an enormous spike in his workload in the last two games, the sports science people are telling me to be very, very careful with him.
“Now that’s difficult because he’s a very good player and you don’t want to be careful with your best players. It’s something we’re going to have to take into consideration. We’ll talk with the sports science people and Michael himself tomorrow. And then we’ll have to make a decision: can he start the game or not?
“It was flagged up at the start of the week because we had three matches and there’s very little time in between. He gets a lot of intensity in his game, a lot of high speed running and sprint distance and general distance. If Michael is going to play in all three with the level of intensity, three matches at the moment might prove very tough for him.
“Then it was flagged up again after the Bournemouth game, and yesterday, and today I’ve had a further discussion both with them and with Michael himself. We’ve decided that because it’s not impossible that he could play — he's not injured per se — we must make a decision with regard to Michael staying fit now and to the end of the season, and what level of risk will there be tomorrow if we ask him to play 90 minutes against Liverpool?”
Hodgson, 76, also said losing matches still hurts just as much as it did when he first became a manager in 1976.
He said: “I know a lot of coaches who go through periods or lose a game and it affects their sleep and life quite drastically for a period of time. I’d like to say to them 'don’t worry, keep going, have a good career, work on your longevity and it will all sort itself out' — but I’d be lying. Unfortunately I still take it [badly].”
Hodgson, who admitted to losing sleep when Palace lose, was asked whether the 2-0 home defeat to Bournemouth on Wednesday impacted his sleep. “Of course, you don’t sleep," he replied.
