Wolves trio of long-term absentees Mike Williamson, Michal Zyro and Jordan Graham are making good progress as they all target a return at some stage of the season.
Williamson has been battling with a troublesome tendon problem while Zyro and Graham are aiming to follow Nouha Dicko back to fitness following serious cruciate knee ligament injuries.
Wolves’ Head of Medical Phil Hayward has given an update on the trio and says they are all making steady progress.
“I’d expect to see Mike back in training at Christmas time,” said Hayward.
“It’s early days but he’s progressing nicely.
“We tried for a long time, pretty much from January until the summer, to settle down the hamstring tendon problem he’d been struggling with.
“Unfortunately it wasn’t responding well to conservative management.
“Because of that we took him for a surgical opinion and he had surgery.
“It’s always the last resort and something you try to avoid, but we’d tried everything else and it wasn’t working.
“He had the surgery three months ago and is rehabbing really well.
“He’s back outside doing conditioning work and also in the gym.
“It’s been incredibly frustrating for everyone concerned.
“Mike passed every test in the medical so there was no question of any issues there.
“Looking back perhaps the problem was he’d been out for a period of time with his hamstring, and it was then his change in load when he started training that set the tendon off.
“But at the time it certainly couldn’t have been foreseen.
“The initial problem should now have been sorted – we’ll find out when we get towards him training whether everything else in that area is as it should be in terms of him being able to function at the level of an elite footballer.”
Graham has also undergone further surgery during his comeback trail, a ‘wash out’ process which is quite common for those who have undergone surgery for knee injuries.
“Jordan is probably about two weeks away from getting outside to start to do some rehab work outside,” said Hayward.
“It's all gym-based and pool-based at the minute. The way that we work here is we try and make sure a player has attained a certain goal or objective in the gym before they're allowed to progress outside.
“He's close to achieving those criteria.
“The recent surgery was a 'wash out', which is quite common among people who have knee surgery.
“Sometimes it's necessary to go back in literally just to tidy things up - he had that done about five weeks ago and has progressed nicely.
“Since then we've carried on along the same track as before in terms of his strength and rehabilitation work."
“With Jordan it's the same as with the others. I wouldn't say he's four or five weeks away, we'd always say 'when he can do X, Y and Z' or when his scores are at pre-injury levels.
“I think we said January all along with Jordan. Him, Nouha and Michal were all multi-ligament injuries that take a year.
“And even after a year it does take a while to get up to speed.
“People can expect players to be back at it as soon as they come back from injury.
“For example, with Nouha, it's been far more than a year and he's still progressing and building up. It'll be the same with Jordan and Michal.
“He's very enthusiastic which is good – you'd rather them be optimistic and ambitious and positive. He's obviously frustrated because it's been the best part of nine months now.
“But he does understand he's got a certain set of criteria to aim towards.
“They all talk and I know Nouha has been helpful with the both of them.”
Wolves Player recently released a video update with Zyro (click here to view) and again, the medical team are pleased with his progress.
“He’s doing well,” said Hayward.
“He’s had an appointment in the past couple of weeks with the consultant who is really happy with his progress.
“We’re probably looking towards the end pf the season, maybe April time, which will be the one year mark.
“He is on track and doing quite nicely and we’re ticking off the boxes as we go along rather than trying to look too far ahead.
“Breaking it down and ticking things off one by one is the best way to focus mentally, I think, rather than think about things that are too ahead as you can lose some focus.
“With shorter term goals, you tick them off and it speeds up the process in your own mind.
“Michal also has a settled family situation which helps – he’s in a different country but it’s not like he’s on his own in a flat.
“He has been really positive, accepted his injury and started the process to get back to training.”
