Wolves’ director of performance Phil Hayward has provided an injury update on Raul Jimenez, who now faces an extended period in the treatment room.
Latest scans and discussions with a number of specialists mean the Mexican striker will undergo surgery on his knee on Friday and is expected to be absent until January, and Hayward spoke to wolves.co.uk about Jimenez, as well as Rodrigo Gomes, Bertrand Traore and Boubacar Traore.
Raul Jimenez
“Raul injured his left MCL against Everton, which was four weeks ago now and unfortunately the injury has not responded as we expected, so we've decided that the best thing is to have surgery to repair that ligament. Normally the ligament for a fairly low-grade injury would heal on its own, however this has not responded as we were expecting, and after regularly scanning for the last three weeks, the ligament is not healing in the anticipated way. We've consulted with several knee specialists and decided the best course of action is to move to surgery to ensure that we are back in control of the time frames and have a clear idea of when he will be back.
“There is a danger that we can keep waiting for things to improve by treating the knee conservatively (without surgery), but if that doesn't happen, then at that stage we need to have surgery and waste more time. So, he'll have the surgery on Friday in London, and then he'll have around three months of rehabilitation before he's ready to play again. It’s obviously really disappointing for all of us, but we need to look forward, get the surgery done and start the rehab process as soon as we can to get him back on the pitch helping the team as quickly as we can.
“After surgery, there's a period when you can't do too much whilst the initial wound heals. It is fairly straightforward surgery for an experienced knee surgeon – the ligament is reattached to the tibia and there is no reconstruction required. The first two weeks he’ll be working on the muscles to maintain the bulk, then after two weeks, once through the initial post-operative phase, he can progress the work in the gym and pool and start to build towards full-weight bearing activities at around four weeks.
“He's obviously really disappointed, as we all are. We all hoped that after the initial scans he would have been back pretty quickly, but unfortunately it's not responding at all. He's disappointed, but he's also happy that we've now got a plan in place with real clarity. We can build around that and make sure that we're getting him back in the time frame.”
Rodrigo Gomes
“Rodrigo’s progressing well, but it's still early days. He injured a couple of ligaments in the ankle, so it wasn't a straightforward injury, but luckily enough they are both fairly low-grade injuries. He's still waiting on the inflammation to settle, and then we'll start to build him up and get him back outside as soon as that's settled. It's not going to be a long-term one, so he should be back reasonably quickly.”
Bertrand Traore
“Bertrand has had a hamstring issue. It's a fairly small injury, however it is in a particularly problematic part of the muscle, which can commonly recur if we're not careful. So, we have to respect that and take our time with it to make sure that once he is back in training, he stays back. He feels completely fine, he has no pain, his strength's good, but the scans still don't look perfect. So, on that basis, we just need to hold him back a little bit and be slow through his next phase because, although he feels great, we know that the tissue integrity isn't quite there just yet. We need to be careful with him over the next week or so, but it's not a big injury and he's doing really well, working hard and won't be too long.”
Boubacar Traore
“Bouba has been out for a couple of weeks because of a problem with his calf. He's back on the pitch working with the rehab coaches and doing really well. He's progressing nicely and he'll be back in full training in the next week or two. It was a fairly minor injury, and he's responded really well to the treatment and he's back on the pitch working hard as it stands.”
