The injury news today from Neil Lennon was a little mixed.
Odsonne Edouard will probably not make the squad for Sunday, and neither will our Israeli footballers.
They are still recovering from the bug and that’s going to take time.
We cannot rush that in any way.
All three will be keen to get back into the team but there is simply no way we’re going to be able to do anything with them until they’ve all had the once over from the medical team and all three assert that they feel back to normal and able to play.
The new on Christopher Jullien is less good; he’s nowhere near fitness yet and the club is obviously monitoring him with a lot of concern. His back injury turns out to have been much more serious than we had initially thought, and any injury there is going to be carefully analysed.
Lennon confirmed that it’s going to be at least a few weeks yet.
James Forrest still has issues which will keep him out for a while, but his foot is out of the cast, and he’ll be given a scan next week.
That may tell us when he’ll be available to play again.
He has some ways to go, just as Jullien does. It will be a while before he’s back.
Mikey Johnson, who’s been out for ages, is back at Lennoxtown, which is excellent news for both the player and the club. But as Lennon has pointed out, he’s not played for a long time and he’s not even been in training … he is weeks away from fitness enough to be considered for the first team.
Overall it doesn’t sound good, but that’s short term thinking.
None of these guys is going to be out for months or anything, all are on the road back but it’s not a road that’s going to make them suddenly available to us. I would think a couple of them will be out for the better part of November, which is trying and taxing for us. But all will be ready for December.
Edouard, Bitton and Elhamed will probably be ready first, with Mikey and James Forrest to come back probably before Jullien. The big Frenchman had a shaky start to the season, but the manager will want him back to increase his options and get the player back up to speed.
With any luck, we’ll start to see these issues resolve themselves quickly.
In the meantime, we do have a good squad to fall back on, which is more than a lot of teams do.
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