Injury News (Or Lack Of It) Ahead of Derby County

Mark Kennedy gave his press conference this morning and whilst snippets are available on YouTube, here at the Stacey West we subscribe to the iFollow to bring you the latest news.

However, I get the impression that the club want to play what i call ‘Danny Cowley’ games when it comes to injuries, as to not give the opposition a head’s up. It’s frustrating for fans who want to know the team in advance, but Mark gave what could be describd as evasive answers when questioned.

He was first asked how the injury situation looked after the weekend, and answered quite simply; “Ok”. Radio Lincolnshire’s Beth tried a different approach, asking if the players she asked about the weekend before were closer to fitness. If memory serves, that was Jordon Garrick, Max Sanders and Danny Mandroiu.

“We start later on a Monday, for reasons I won’t go into,” replied Mark, setting up the second avoidance. “In terms of Jordon everything was fine, he’s training and trained well. The other guys I’ll get an update on, I’d be doing it now actually! If we have this interview a little bit later on a Monday I could give you an answer.”

Undeterred, Beth tried a third approach, referring to an 11v 11 game the lads had at the weekend against each other, and asking if any of the injured players statuses changed in that game. “No,” Mark replied with a wry smile. “Everything is as it was then (last week), nothing’s changed.”

Closer to fitness? Maybe, maybe not! – Credit Graham Burrell

So, there you have it. No injury update, so you’ll have to stab in the dark on your Fan Hub selections!

However, one area Mark always comes to life in is discussing training, and as I pointed out on my Dog Walk Video this morning, the break could do the players some good, and that was something he alluded to when asked about the benefits of training over playing matches,

“If you’re just playing Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday, players can just become detrained and you lose a lot of tactical input,” he said. “You lose a lot of training days; you have matchday recovery, secondary recovery, matchday minus ones and you don’t do any training.

“It’s very difficult to implement your philosophy when you’re Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday and as mentioned players can actually become detrained. It can be detrimental to your training programme.”

So, we might not know whether there’s been benefit to the injured players until an hour before kick-off tomorrow, but we will at least know the time on the training pitch has been well spent.