Full-back Moritz Volz says he hopes to be back in action before the end of the season after undergoing surgery on his groin injury last week. Volz returned to Germany for the surgery, which was eventually discovered to be a hernia.
Volz told his Volzy.com website: "Hopefully [I'll be able to] join in with some ball work [this] week, depending on how it's feeling. The international break that's coming up will also give me a bit of extra time to get back in shape so that I can hopefully play out the rest of the season without any further complications.
"It's never nice to have surgery but in my case it wasn't too unwelcome as it gives me hope that the injury trouble I've had on and off for the past weeks has been finally sorted out once and for all now.
"The operation was done under local anaesthetic, but they gave me some sleeping gas too, just to get me snoozing. It only took about 45 minutes but needless to say, I was fairly spaced out for a few hours after.
"Back in my room I was in a world of my own and apparently coming out with some fairly random stuff - and all in English too, even though I was in the motherland! But it soon wore off and by the evening I was back to myself and tucking into a nice bit of suckling pig and dumplings - when in Rome and all that!â€Â
Volz is on loan with the Blues until the end of the season.