Fullkrug’s ‘Comeback’ – Plan Detailed In German Press

The ‘Niclas Fullkrug Achilles’ saga continues to rumble on. Those of you who’ve read the suggestions from West Ham’s source inside the club that he will be ‘close to, or on the bench’ in 8 days time for the Tottenham game will be heartened by news from sportbild.de today suggesting an ‘agreement’ has been reached between Fullkrug and Julen Lopetegui to stagger his re-introduction after the international break.

According to the report – kindly translated by sportwitness.co.uk, Fullkrug’s lack of action before he was injured is nothing to be concerned about because the player was ‘behind’ in his pre-season preparation. All blamed back to Euro24 and the lack of player holidays which then conflicted with his pre-season. So he arrived at West Ham in August unready for football – he played a total of 63 minutes in four games – and then picked up the achilles injury on German national team duty.

The report continues “The situation isn’t great and has led to a ‘consultation’ with West Ham manager Julen Lopetegui and a new plan has been drawn up. Füllkrug will now be ‘slowly introduced’ to the team and a ‘maximum load’ over 90 minutes.

West Ham want Füllkrug to be the leader in their team and hope he will be fit again after the October international break but also need to avoid further injuries.

So, the plan appears to be to integrate him slowly into the team to get him fully fit and firing after this international break.”

Well, tell us something we don’t know. He won’t be starting any time soon then. Hopefully he’ll at least appear in training to dispel the persistent rumour that the injury requires surgery. (See C and H Tuesday).

I’ve not seen anything to lead me to expect him back any time soon: Either West Ham are keeping him wrapped up as a surprise weapon against Spuds – dream on –  or we are being drip-fed the news regarding a very, very long recovery period that the 31 year old needs.