Graham Potter has broken his silence about the situation regarding Todibo and his return from injury.
Since his return from injury, Todibo has only played between 62 to 65 minutes against Arsenal, Leicester City and Newcastle.
Quizzed about the slow return Potter told the press this afternoon“When you’re out for a period of time, especially with the type of injury that he had, you’d normally build up the minutes,” It’s hard to expect him to go into 90 minutes straight away. He’s doing Ramadan as well, so it’s the first week. Obviously there are complications there around diet and recovery, [so we just need to] be mindful of that on the back of an injury. He’s getting stronger and stronger and he’s available for close to 90 for this game.”
It appears Potter is not willing to take too many chances with Todibo who has been previously described as injury prone.
The 25-year-old has spent 326 days injured in the last five and a half years since he broke through to senior football at Barcelona, 37 of those days have been at West Ham.
Maybe Potter is correct to be risk-averse in protecting his player with a gradual return to a full 90 minutes by wrapping him up in cotton wool.
There is no doubt Todibo is a real talent and West Ham will want to protect the £34m obligation they have already agreed to pay this summer to Nice.
Brilliant, not!! Another big error
Fitness is everything in sport. If you have the talent, the fitter you are the better you will be when measured against your peers. That said, ligament and muscle injuries can happen to all levels, and I wonder if some of the changes made to the game of football are having a negative impact. The focus on keeping things moving, having spare balls on little pedestals around the pitch and someone to retrieve the ball so that no precious seconds are wasted, eliminates what used to be natural opportunities to recover from those intense bursts of action. Maybe there is a need to substitute half the team at 60 – 70 minutes.
You say “ there’s no doubt Todibo is a real talent,” whilst wearing a West Ham shirt, try and and tell me how many times this has been experienced by all of us West Ham fans, I’ll answer for you mate, very few, for whatever reason he’s going down as just another mistake who cannot cut it in the premiership
Wow. That is a lot of time out injured for a young man who is still only 25.
Hopefully he can stay fit for a prolonged period or the fee we agreed for him will seem a little steep.
Definitely wise to manage him carefully.