Injury Problems

Injuries Mount At The Vetch

The sight of Stuart Jones leaving the Vetch today on crutches was a sore sight for any Swans fan as they look for the team to bounce back from defeat at Yeovil on Saturday with a result at Scunthorpe this coming weekend. With longer term absentees including Jason Smith and Roberto Martinez not nearing full fitness we are facing a huge test of the squad that Flynn has built over the coming weeks.

Fans are already calling for replacements as the side looks to be including several youngsters together – not really an ideal situation? We always expected that they would form a part of the side this season but not in so many numbers and all together at this early stage surely.

I would imagine that Brian Flynn must be looking at the loan possibility at the moment with winger Brad Maylett joining in with the fans in saying that the defence needs working on. Speaking to the Western Mail, Maylett commented "We always look creating chances, but if we don’t sort things out defensively, we’re going to concede more than we score, and that’s going to be a big problem this season."

Flynn was more positive that we could bounce back from this defeat providing we had experience back in our team "I must admit that we do need our experienced players back. We had six out injured against Yeovil and any team would suffer in that situation. Lenny, Karl, Roberto, Jason…the list goes on. The sooner we get them back the better because we need our old heads in the team. You’ve got to give the youngsters a chance and if they’re up for the challenge, they will stay in. But at the same time, there’s no substitute for experience. We’ve had a terrible run of injuries and we do need people to start coming back."

Could we read into that that we are playing youngsters until they get fit again or he will dip into the transfer market to get some experience short term until our players become fit again? It seems that the former is the more likely with Flynn again commenting "Lenny is the most likely one to return against Scunthorpe and it’s touch and go for Karl. But if they’re not fit, we’ll just have to get on with it and other people will get their chance again"

Time will tell what effect this will have on our long term plans for the season – we have to hope that we can win a few games in the meantime before we are back to full strength. We are on target for a promotion season from the opening six games (projected points 92) and if we can be on target come the end of October then full credit to everyone there.

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