Motherwell trio take positive steps in return from injury bids as club take key lessons away from blows to duo

Rangers' Dujon Sterling (L) and Motherwell's Shane Blaney in action last seasonRangers' Dujon Sterling (L) and Motherwell's Shane Blaney in action last season
Rangers' Dujon Sterling (L) and Motherwell's Shane Blaney in action last season | SNS Group
Motherwell are nearing some injury returns to their squad.

Motherwell manager Stuart Kettlewell says three of the club’s injured core have taken positive steps in their bids to make returns.

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A host of first-team players at the Premiership side have been left injured for weeks or months at the start of this season. Johnny Koutroumbis and Callum Slattery are yet to feature while Harry Paton, Sam Nicholson, Ross Callachan, Filip Stuparevic, Shane Blaney and Apostolos Stamatelopoulos have also been battling various injury issues.

Blaney, Koutroumbis and Stamatelopoulos are all back on the grass ahead of this weekend’s league match against Aberdeen, with the club on a run of three straight wins in all competitions. They might not be fit to face the Dons but the boss insists they are making good strides.

He said: “We’ve had a number of the guys who have been injured back on the grass. Still got a bit of time to go with that to try and build up that core fitness to make sure they are fully over the injuries.

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“The three that stick out in my head for that are Shane Blaney, Apostolos Stamatelopoulos, and Johnny Koutroumbis. They’ve all been working at a similar level, Johnny out longer than the other two so might take him a wee bit longer to build up.

“Don’t expect them back in the squad this weekend but it seems far more positive that we are starting to see these guys back out on the grass and running. That’s a boost for them personally but a boost for us to start to see that.”

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With an A-League pre-season differing majorly from the Scottish equivalent, it’s something that Kettlewell has noticed in the case of Koutroumbis and Stamatelopoulos, who have arrived from Perth Glory and Newcastle Jets respectively in the summer. Lessons have been learned in the wake of their muscle issues.

He explained: “We tried to do our due diligence with both guys. I think coming from Australia, and I built up a good understanding of this before pre-season with Johnny, is that what we do now is a complete whirlwind in pre-season. We’ve got a couple of weeks to get ourselves fit and up to speed and we start playing games really quickly.

“Before you know it you are into competitive action. Over in Australia, it’s a far longer process, over two months they work during pre-season and they have longer to work themselves into being ready for a season. The change of mindset is a big thing but obviously we can see that has had some sort of impact on the body, on the muscles, both guys are muscle injuries. There’s definitely takeaways for us as a football club that way.

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“Do we think we try to ward against it as much as we can? Yes, probably, but even when you think you are doing that you might need to be more cautious with those two players. We want to give them wee extra time now as we think we can build them up to be guys who come into our group and stay there, ultimately.”

Krisztian Hegyi, Tawanda Maswanhise, Lennon Miller and Ewan Wilson were all on national team duty for their nations over the international break. Kettlewell added: “These guys won’t train today (Thursday), all the lads involved in playing games on Tuesday with the travel and everything.

“They don’t train today. Tawanda Maswanhise will be back in later on today so he will back in at the football club later this afternoon. The other guys it’s still part of that recovery process, they’ve had travel, a couple of games in there. Ewan, Krisztian and Lennon all played 90 minutes on Tuesday.

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“So it’s a case of trying to prepare them to get ready to go and travel to Aberdeen and make sure they are able give us something in the game. These guys will not do a session today, it will be more analysis based. More around what we want to do tactically for the game without really taking part in anything in the intensity of a session.”

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