According to the ‘Gus Bennett out for a while and Labs and Croft not available any time soon. Injuries, injuries - are we unlucky or what?

For me this is one of our managers biggest faults, knowing when to ease off or rest players, by either not starting them or making a sub earlier in games. I think this is down to his own inexperience as a manager and I hope something he figures out over time. Could also be the pressure of the club being cash strapped that they need to win games like the Plymouth one so he has to gamble with players fitness.

There have been times where players coming back from injury are playing from the start or full games when they clearly need to come off after recently returning. The balance of needing minutes but exceeding what they are capable of too soon and putting them at risk of injury again needs to maybe be looked at.

One obvious example for me is Scott Bennett who has had a couple of injuries recently, could we have got away with him not playing against Plymouth? Instead he plays and gets injured. May have been a contact related injury which is naturally unavoidable but as I was not there I don't know.

Reluctance to play play some of our younger players like Foulston in some games as well (I believe he might be away on international duty at the moment but there have been other times he could play).

Sometimes the small gamble in 1 game, could save a player for 2,3,4 or more games in the future. Likewise it could force us to see the talent we have within the youth ranks and give them game time.

I think it was Cambridge away a few years back when we were forced to play Regan Poole to cover injuries and look how that turned out.

Hindsight is great but Bennett was not risked against Met Police so MF knew the danger.The options were,play Dolan instead of resting him for Saturday,play Scot if he said he felt ok or play Cooper who is struggling to make the grade.

It seems to me that our injury situation is only worthy of criticism/concern if there is statistical evidence that our situation is markedly worse than other league sides with similar size squads? Is there any?

My concern is that MF continually seems to be suckered into signing lame duck players, and this with the Club being cash strapped. We now have Hats talking about a few weeks for Croft and Labadie yet last week MF was even holding out the possibility of a return this Saturday, if only on the bench. At this rate neither player is likely to figure before the New Year.

stripe.ncfc wrote:For me this is one of our managers biggest faults, knowing when to ease off or rest players, by either not starting them or making a sub earlier in games. I think this is down to his own inexperience as a manager and I hope something he figures out over time. Could also be the pressure of the club being cash strapped that they need to win games like the Plymouth one so he has to gamble with players fitness.

There have been times where players coming back from injury are playing from the start or full games when they clearly need to come off after recently returning. The balance of needing minutes but exceeding what they are capable of too soon and putting them at risk of injury again needs to maybe be looked at.

One obvious example for me is Scott Bennett who has had a couple of injuries recently, could we have got away with him not playing against Plymouth? Instead he plays and gets injured. May have been a contact related injury which is naturally unavoidable but as I was not there I don't know.

Reluctance to play play some of our younger players like Foulston in some games as well (I believe he might be away on international duty at the moment but there have been other times he could play).

Sometimes the small gamble in 1 game, could save a player for 2,3,4 or more games in the future. Likewise it could force us to see the talent we have within the youth ranks and give them game time.

I think it was Cambridge away a few years back when we were forced to play Regan Poole to cover injuries and look how that turned out.

Hamstring again mate, sounds like he returned too soon but hindsight is infallible eh?

Many clubs take a gamble on injury prone players that could be playing at a higher level if they had a consistent run of fitness.

I’m not saying Crofts is injury prone because his record suggests that this is not the case, but a parallel can be drawn with Luke Williams at Hartlepool. Crofts and Williams both played for Scunthorpe last season and both were released after playing very few games for the club. Williams signed for Hartlepool and Crofts came to the County. Both have contributed little on the pitch this season and the comments about Williams on the Hartlepool forum pretty much mirror the criticisms of the signing of Crofts on this forum. I’m sure it happens with injured players at most clubs.

I would support Flynn’s signing of Crofts because Crofts’ record shows he’s a decent player and the signing was worth the gamble. We wouldn’t have had a chance of signing players like Demetriou or O’Brien if they hadn’t been injured and look at what they’ve contributed to this club.

So just Bennett then really !!

Like has been mentioned previously.... he wasn’t risked at Met Police and has trained/been monitored throughout his rehab, so I don’t think anything un towards, except bad luck.

Injuries are part of the game!

Justanordinaryfan wrote:So just Bennett then really !!

Like has been mentioned previously.... he wasn’t risked at Met Police and has trained/been monitored throughout his rehab, so I don’t think anything un towards, except bad luck.

Injuries are part of the game!

Hopefully just Bennett as a new injury, and forbes (pipe must be close to running on empty) pring and marsh-brown will be available for Saturday? not sure about Foulston and Collins?

Another injury today with Willmott. looked like a hamstring which is usually a minimum 2-3 weeks. Hopefully Forbes and Marsh-Brown will be available next week, not forgetting Foulston and Collins. First time I've had a good long look at Pring today and believe he is a valuable addition to the squad. Come on Crofts and Labadie !

It's possibly a little unfair to include Labadie amongst the injured because he's still in rehab from his long-standing injury, Crofts seems to be a case of not being impatient with a return because that might lead to a long-term injury.

Bennett and Willmott are supposedly hamstring strains which is around 3 weeks out. Whether it might be better not to rush them back after this time frame is an interesting question to ask.

I would suggest that the short-term loss of Bennett may be of greater concern than the short-term loss of Willmott, in that Bennett (and Crofts and Labadie) are ball-winning midfielders which County don't have ready-made replacements for whereas Willmott can be replaced by Pring, Marsh-Brown or even Tom Hillman (who I thought looked lively when replacing Willmott v Plymouth).

Disappointed for Robbie but it means Pring should finally get a league start.He has looked good in the Cup games and sub appearance in Lg2 so now is his chance.

I was talking to a Colchester fan ar ht, he was telling me that they had a similar problem until the physio insisted on a change of training ground. He reckoned their previous one was soft on surface but rock hard underneath, not sure it’s true but when I was playing , the only hamstring problems I got was when in the close season I played hard-court tennis.

lowandhard wrote:I was talking to a Colchester fan ar ht, he was telling me that they had a similar problem until the physio insisted on a change of training ground. He reckoned their previous one was soft on surface but rock hard underneath, not sure it’s true but when I was playing , the only hamstring problems I got was when in the close season I played hard-court tennis.

I think we need to remember what we were training on pre-season too.

Also training on a different type of surface to what you play on doesn't help muscles.

Croft’s brought in with the thought of if we get c amount of games out of him the brilliant, but the ulterior motive is that he’s a replacement for if and when Flynn leaves.