Jlloyd Samuel Closes In On Return

The official site say that left-back Jlloyd Samuel, the subject of much transfer speculation through the summer, is finally recovering from an initial thigh injury plus further complications.

Jlloyd strained his thigh against Reading and Martin O’Neill explains his return took longer than expected,

‘That’s been really slow – it’s been a lot slower than we anticipated. It’s like two injuries in one – a thigh pull and then he developed a lump in the thigh as well but we’re getting to grips with it. It’s hard to put a time scale on it.’

Might take some doing to force his way back into the team now anyway, lets hope he is up for the challenge as he doesn’t now just have to try to shift Wilfred Bouma when the Dutch international returns but also skipper Gareth Barry who has moved to left-back in a re-shuffle to accommodate Stiliyan Petrov.