Some encouragement today for Wolves as veteran Matt Doherty has had a successful procedure on his persistent wrist injury.
Matt Doherty has been a favourite of Vitor Pereira’s for some time. The Irishman was a fixture in Wolves’ back three last season, and has been preferred as the traditional right-back in Wolves’ new back four system.
Wolves’ director of high performance, Phil Hayward, explained that Doherty suffered a small fracture back in August after falling onto his hand, and the medical staff identified the break straight away. They were just waiting for the opportune time to carry out the operation.
Thankfully, it was a success, and the next question to ask is when he will be available again for Wolves.
Matt Doherty is desperate to return to the line-up
This was not a severe injury, but surgery was required and Wolves made the decision to do it now at the start of the international break. That minimises the impact of Doherty’s absence, but Hayward doesn’t want to say when he will return.
As he explains (via Wolves): “He’s desperate to get back, but obviously, we need to respect the fact that he’s had surgery.”
But he is confident that a full recovery will be made, saying: “The success rate of these surgeries is very, very high, and he should be back training pretty quickly. We can get him going fairly soon with non-contact training and doing things on the grass which don’t involve a risk of him falling to maintain his fitness levels while the bone heals.
“Then as soon as he’s ready to go back into competition again and take full contact, he should be good to go.”
With no medical qualifications to back this up, a fracture sounds like at least a month of absence. Pereira has used Doherty more since changing the system, clearly trusting in his experience. The sooner Wolves can have him back in the fray, the better.
Wolves’ fitness staff are clearly doing a good job
Compared to many of the Premier League teams above them, Wolves have been pretty good in terms of injuries this season.
The one that springs to mind is Jorgen Strand Larsen, who still isn’t 100% following an Achilles issue.
But as a whole the squad has remained almost fully fit. The only other current injury is to 19-year-old Leon Chiwome, who tore his ACL in January.
Credit to all those working hard to keep the players in shape, although you would like if that stellar injury record translated into a few more points on the board.