Joe Allen will not be included in the Swansea City squad for the derby game against Cardiff City tomorrow. With six weeks to go to the World Cup the club have referred Allen to a ‘specific’ specialist who has assisted players to overcome the overall symptoms connected with his latest hamstring injury and associated conditions. And that’s the real issue.

The first piece of news isn’t a surprise as Allen’s last injury, also a hamstring injury took nearly sixty five days to overcome. Just before that first hamstring injury Joe was out for ten months with a ruptured Achilles. Unfortunately this is the crucial issue affecting him now, the knock on from those injuries and the impact that hamstring recovery can have on reoccurrence of other injuries suffered during a playing career. We have been told that the priority for Russell Martin and the Swansea medical team is to get Joe Allen ready for the World Cup, as we’ve said before, and as Martin has already stated, the club want him at the World Cup.

The issue of course isn’t always the injury connected to the player it’s the history and reoccurrence of a specific injury or injuries already suffered in rehab. Joe has had a whole collection of debilitating injuries over his career, groin, thigh, a variety of muscle strains and of course the recent hamstring issues. Recovering from one can easily impact on another. The body isn’t as strong as it should be when injured, weight on parts of the body and compensating for injuries when in training have caused numerous issues for Joe. The situation now though is very clear, Joe won’t play on Sunday and is going to be out the following Saturday against Bristol City. It’s the week after that leading up to the Tuesday Preston away game ( Nov 1st ) and more than likely the Wigan home game the following Saturday ( Nov 5th ) where Swansea see him potentially retuning to the squad.

If he doesn’t then the situation becomes incredibly serious for Joe and the biggest moment in his professional career. And this is why.

Questions in certain quarters are already being asked about Joe being included in the Wales squad. Interestingly, and it’s not widely known that Rob Page the Wales manager will submit a large squad of players, up to fifty five we are led to believe to FIFA in the next seven days or so. That list will not be made public by the governing body. We can expect Joe Allen and Ben Cabango to be on that list, and some would also hasten to add the name of Oli Cooper as well. By November 14th Page will have to submit his final squad of twenty six, just nine days after Allen’s anticipated restart in the Swansea team.

We are talking fine margins here folks.

The reasoning behind such a large initial registration of players with FIFA is the fact the football season in many countries is still ongoing right up to the World Cup. Of course there needs to be flexibility for potential injuries in the interim and the covid situation worldwide is still an issue in certain parts. Joe will make that first selection, no doubt, whether he makes the second is very much down to the best minds in the country to help him medically succeed in his rehabilitation. As it stands that’s touch and go, we can only keep our fingers crossed for him.

Photographs licensed from Reuters

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