Wolves will continue to be cautious with Mike Williamson as he aims to hit top fitness during pre-season – as Jordan Graham and Michal Zyro also continue to make progress.
Williamson suffered a troublesome tendon injury which saw him unable to appear and build on his successful loan spell when joining Wolves permanently back in January.
But after a summer of work at the training ground, Williamson has been back in full training although may miss the odd session during pre-season to exercise caution.
“Mike’s been in through the summer working hard to try and get to the end of this tendon problem,” said Head of Medical Phil Hayward.
“He seems to be over it but we’ll be really careful with him over the next few weeks.
“Tendons are notorious for not responding too well to changes in load.
“Pre-season is a time when tendons can become irritated if you’re going from a lower level of activity in the summer period to pushing things quite hard with more intensive work.
“I wouldn’t expect him to do all the pre-season work over this period - he might miss a session here or there to make sure that increase in load is gradual.
“But as it stands he’s good to go and he’ll be heavily involved in pre-season.
“It’s been a nightmare problem, a very difficult injury.
“At least with the ACL injuries you have a fairly defined timeline, but with the tendon issue sometimes it’s a case of ‘how long is a piece of string’.
“It can feel really good one day and then you’ll do something, it reacts, it’ll feel sore the next day and you’re back to square one.
“It feels like there’s no clear end point in sight, which is very frustrating for players.
“Hopefully now he’s over that and can make a belated start to his Wolves career.”
Graham sustained a cruciate ligament injury against Cardiff in January, and has also been making good progress in his recovery.
His positive attitude has seen him targeting a return ahead of the initial estimated 12 months timespan, but Hayward has said they cannot afford to take any risks.
“Jordan is ticking all of our time goals,” says the medical chief.
“When he had the surgery the advisory was that it was a serious injury and could be about a year.
“The initial time plan is usually what you’re looking at.
“For us it’s a timeline based on the healing of the tissue in the knee.
“Jordan’s great, he’s enthusiastic and determined which is what you want.
“I wouldn’t necessarily want the fans to get too excited about him being back for that specific game (with Aston Villa).”
Zyro who also suffered a cruciate knee ligament injury – at MK Dons in April – is also involved in a lengthy rehabilitation programme as he
Hayward added: Michal is approaching three months post-op and doing really well.
“At this stage it’s as good as we could have thought.
“A lot of key things to tick off along the way he’s ticked off, some of them in advance of when we’d expect.
“It probably doesn’t change too much in terms of the timeline.
“Even if you’ve ticked off all the boxes five months in, you’re still not going to put somebody back in.
“With an ACL it does need to get to around nine months before the graft itself is strong enough to meet the demands of playing.
“But it does mean we can start to advance his rehab. He’s doing great.”
Nouha Dicko is set to be the first to return from Wolves’ trio of cruciate ligament injuries.
The striker is currently resting after having a staple removed from his knee put in during the surgery but has a chance of being available for the start of the season.
“All three – Nouha, Jordan and Michal – have been really complicated and severe,” added Hayward.
“It’s quite unprecedented.
“Every single one had been more than one ligament, and some cartilage involvement too.”
