The work of the club’s medical staff on injuries and Covid have been praised by CEO Mark Ashton and director of performance Andy Rolls.
The duo were speaking at last night’s Fans’ Forum in the Sir Bobby Robson Suite and were asked about the role of the medical team with injuries having hampered Town less during 2021/22 than in previous recent campaigns.
"That whole performance team work very hard,” Rolls said. "Often it seems to fall on the medical team, the responsibility for lots injuries, the medical team often get labelled with that and that’s often unfair, it’s a much bigger team than that. It’s coach, manager, performance director led.
"We set our standards very high. The [target squad] percentage of availability for Champions League teams is 86 per cent. We’ve set our aim at 88 per cent going through the season as one of our KPIs [key performance indicators].
"We assess that on a Friday and there have only been three Fridays this season where we’ve been below that. Given the increase in training since Kieran has come in, we’ve been very pleased with that.”
Regarding the Covid protocols which remain in place, with Town not having had an outbrake which has led to a postponed match this season, Rolls added: "We have also made the decision not to make any changes to our Covid protocols until the end of the season. We will then review it in the summer and see how we go.
"We’ve perhaps relaxed things five or 10 per cent at the training ground but we’ve still got very rigid protocols. We’re still travelling on two coaches and we still have single occupancy rooms rather than twin rooms in hotels.
"We’re probably being a little bit 'boring' by sticking to it, but that's because I don’t want an outbreak of Covid to impact anything that we’re building towards.”
Ashton added: "The football club is sometimes like a swan, it looks calm on the surface but there is a helluva lot of activity that goes on underneath that people do not see.
"This football club has one of the best Covid, or anti-Covid, records in the country. Andy Rolls, Matt Byard and the medical team have worked tirelessly and have worked wonders to keep our players and staff safe, and to keep the games going.
"They deserve huge credit for that and they probably do not get the credit they deserve.”
Quizzed on his department, Rolls continued: "The performance department’s main job is to take as much 'rubbish' away from the manager as possible so he can concentrate on what he does in training, what players he buys and what team he picks.
"Underneath me, I have Matt Byard who has been here for many years and is head of medicine, Andy Costin, who is head of sports science, and Ivan Mukandi, who manages the strength and conditioning side.
"I also have the responsibility with [club secretary] Stuart [Hayton] and [chief operating officer] Luke [Werhun] for the arrangement of transport so the manager doesn’t have to worry about where we are eating or what hotels we are staying at.
"The best way to sum the job up is that it is allowing the manager to concentrate purely on football.”