Motherwell manager Graham Alexander has discussed why the Fir Park club have suffered several long-term injuries this season.
Alexander’s winter window signings – Eddie Nolan, Harry Smith and Sam Foley – have struggled for regular minutes while Jordan Roberts has picked up a season-ending injury. Other key players like Liam Donnelly, Sherwin Seedorf, Trevor Carson, Scott Fox and Liam Grimshaw have also had action limited in the 2020/21 campaign.
That’s not including medium-term injuries to the likes of Mark O’Hara and Declan Gallagher, Alexander revealing zero of the long-term absentees will be back this season: “Without going into each individual case -I’ll probably miss one out as there is that many – Scott Fox has been training with us for 10 days.
“That’s a bonus but apart from that nobody has returned to training yet. If we were in a more difficult position in the league, we would maybe push one or two more aggressively to be available. But because of the situation, it isn’t worth the risk of further long-term injury.
“We would rather take our time with them and make sure when we come back for pre-season, they are fully fit and ready to go. Scott Fox has only been training for 10 days after so long out so he won’t get the opportunity to play in the final three games. The rest of the guys won’t be available for the rest of the season.”
With Motherwell’s Scottish Premiership status secured ahead of the final league matches with Kilmarnock, Dundee United and Ross County, Alexander won’t be handing out opportunities for the sake of it. But the Premiership’s Manager of the Month for April says it’s been a tough time for those on the side, especially the January recruits.
He said: “I think the obvious reason is Covid and players missing a substantial amount of playing time. The training schedules when we first returned – I’m talking about my time in England – were very difficult to get into a normal training regime. It’s been an issue. We have to look at our own protocols.
“We have to question everything. But because the injuries have been quite widespread throughout football, I think that is the main thing. But we have to try and recruit players who can play 40-50 games in the season and that’s a big job for us in the summer.
“Sam Foley to be fair has been training and has been in the squad the last few games but the form of others has curtailed his games. Eddie was injured straight away and we haven’t even had him in training. Harry we got a few weeks from then he picked up an injury. It’s really frustrating.
“We were really up against it in January and we brought in a few players that were injured pretty much straight away. It’s been a challenge for us and when we were in those bottom three positions, we had 17 senior players out at one time. That was a challenge but the togetherness of the players got us through. But we don’t want to be in that position again.”
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