Fitness coach Jim Henry has revealed that right-back Kane Vincent-Young has been in Doha, Qatar this week with physio Matt Byard seeing a specialist regarding his groin injury. Henry, speaking at last night’s Meet the Club event, has also given an update on the progress of Freddie Sears, Teddy Bishop and Jack Lankester.
Vincent-Young, who has made a hugely impressive start to his Town career having signed from Colchester in August, suffered a recurrence of the groin problem which saw him miss a couple of games earlier this month at Southend last Saturday but with the problem not expected to keep him out of action for too long.
Sears tore a cruciate knee ligament injury earlier this year, as did young striker Ben Morris, while Lankester suffered a second stress fracture in his back during pre-season and Bishop a medial ligament problem.
Quizzed on the current situations with Sears, Bishop, Lankester and Morris, Henry said: "Freddie’s been training this week, he’s done some jump training just two days ago.
"I think we’re still talking about a number of months until he’s fully fit. That’s basically because we have to be careful because of [the danger of] re-injury. He’s probably a few months away still Freddie.
"Ben Morris, I haven’t really seen much of Ben Morris. Jack Lankester’s had a back problem, that’s going to take probably from now until the end of the season.
"Bishop’s doing really well. He’s had a medial strain and that takes a little bit of time, a few months until he’s back. He’s doing a lot of strength work, he’s started to do some aerobic work today, so again we’re still talking about a number of weeks until he’s back on the grass.”
Town have had plenty of long-term injury problems over recent seasons but Henry says the Blues are far from the only ones.
"It’s definitely happening at other football clubs, that’s for sure,” he reflected. "If you look at Portsmouth, I think they’ve had six cruciates in the last two or three years. I think Tranmere when we played them had something like 10 out.
"If you look at the top football clubs, Tottenham, Chelsea, Manchester United’s a really good example, they had 75 injuries last year. They’ve got the best facilities in the world and they’re still struggling.
"I think we’ve done really well with injuries. I think Matt has probably been a little bit under-resourced for the last few seasons, but we’re starting to get on top of that now.
"We’re sending a lot of our players to Ireland for assessment. Matt’s over in Doha right now with Kane Vincent-Young right now.
"The club’s spending a lot of money now, we’re starting to address that. I think it’s only time before that pays dividends.”
Previously, Town players spent time at Aspetar in Doha, which describes itself as the "world's leading specialised orthopaedic and sports medicine hospital”, in the summer of 2018.
Meanwhile, Henry also stressed the importance of the first-team chef Adam Gooderham: "The chef is a massive advantage, food’s important. They need the right carbohydrates and protein, we have a Michelin star chef at the football club and he’s fantastic.
"We managed to lure him away from some restaurant and he is fantastic. It’s definitely worth coming for some lunch.”