Norwich City’s preparations for the visit of Champions elect, Brighton on Friday night, have been given a boost by the return to fitness of Alex Tettey.
Tettey missed the win against Preston at Deepdale on Monday with a back issue that has seen him suffer spasms in recent weeks.
Speaking at Colney in his pre-Brighton presser on Thursday lunchtime, Caretaker manager, Alan Irvine also gave an upbeat assessment of Timm Klose when he spoke to the Pink ‘Un
“Timm is still injured but a lot better and making progress. We hope he will be in contention before the end of the season,” said Irvine.
‘Alex Tettey trained today. That was his first day back training, so he has done that and seems to have come through okay. We`ll monitor that over the next few hours and make sure he is fit enough. He has had a bit of a back spasm in recent weeks and getting patched up to go out and play. It just became too much, no doubt because of the number of games in a short period of time. We kept him away from training for as long as we could. In terms of the other boys nothing else from Easter. Matt Jarvis and Louis Thompson of course are still injured, so it has been big numbers for training.”
It’ll be interesting to see if Irvine throws Tettey straight back in or not, although I suspect that much will depend on how fit he really is. Brighton will be a big test (obviously) as they seek to seal the Championship title as soon as possible.
We are at home and we will have all the advantages on the night, apart from a leaky defence, of course. I would expect that Wes Hoolahan may well return and it might be that Graham Dorrans keeps his place even if Tettey is fit. Jonny Howson might fill out the right ‘wing’ position in an attempt to solidify the formation and put a bit more steel in it.
I can’t really see Irvine making much of a formation change and Alex Neil also used to use Howson on the right in the tougher games, so that may be how Irvine decides to line up. The problem of course is that we will then be a little short of pace and one of the Murphy’s might be a better outlet, assuming they decide to track back.
It may be harsh on Steven Naismith if Wes returns after his two assists at Deepdale and the Scot did enough to maybe see Wessi warm the bench.
Interestingly, I think I’m right in saying that Neil will be in the studio for Sky Sports at Carrow Road, to give his insight into what’s going on.
So if you can’t make the game, you’ll have that as an aside.
OTBC