Aston Villa lionheart Luke Young plays through the pain
May 13 2009 by Mathew Kendrick, Birmingham Mail
“But towards the second half of a lot of the games I’ve felt it quite a lot and I’ve been struggling a little bit and hobbling in the last 15 or 20 minutes.
“So if someone is one-on-one with me I find it difficult to change direction, but it’s not a massive problem and I’ll get through it.”
Young revealed that he originally picked up the bone bruising during a collision in training with striker Marlon Harewood.
And the popular right-back, a virtual Villa ever-present, insists the problem will not require surgery, just rest, during the summer.
“When we went to Dubai we had a training session and had some one-on-ones, defence versus attack,” recalled Young. “Marlon got the ball and I wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible because we’d done quite a few in a row.
“I tried to smash the ball away and caught the bottom of his studs.
“I couldn’t play for the next few days, but I just thought nothing of it.
“When we came back to England I trained the next day fine, but I came back in the day after that and I couldn’t even run on it, so since then I’ve not really trained too much and when I have trained I’ve been in pain.
“There’s still bone bruising so there’s not much you can do with it and not much treatment you can get. It’s just an injury that I can’t really get rid of at the minute.”
Young admitted he was due to sit out the recent matches against Hull and Fulham until fill-in full-back Carlos Cuellar was taken ill.
And the former Middlesbrough defender is unsure whether he will be called upon to face his former club at the Riverside on Saturday.
“It’s been a slog,” he added. “I’ve been waking up every day and wondering if I can train.
“I’ve been going out there and annoying the coaching staff by saying sorry it’s no good and spending two days on a running machine and then trying to train when I can.
“It’s been frustrating really. I had injections, but it didn’t really help.
“I think if the manager wants to play me I can play. I don’t think I’m 100 per cent but I’m not far off it.”
