Norwich City will be without Sam Byram for the rest of the season after the full-back suffered a desperate injury set-back last week against Liverpool. Sam suffered a hamstring injury during the game and had to be replaced by Jamal Lewis. He has had surgery and is likely to be out for around four months.
Fortunately, Lewis isn’t a bad stand-in having played all of last season at left full-back. He did very well when he came on, especially when you consider that he had to deal with Mo Salah.
Norwich Head Coach, Daniel Farke spoke to the assembled media at Colney on Friday lunchtime at his usual pre-match presser and the injury to Byram wasn’t the only bit of downbeat news he had for us.
🎙 Daniel Farke has arrived at Lotus Training Centre for his pre-Wolves press conference.
Updates to follow ⬇ #ncfchttps://t.co/s5DOSLGXJs
— Norwich City FC (@NorwichCityFC) February 21, 2020
Christoph Zimmermann is described as a major doubt for this weekend’s trip to Wolves due to a hamstring problem of his own and Onel Hernandez is also unlikely to be involved in the squad due to injuring his knee in a training ground incident on Wednesday.
💬 DF: Timm is doing well in rehab. Hopefully he's not too far away from team training. He adapts well to the load we put on him.#NCFC pic.twitter.com/o9BVHUcGjr
— Norwich City FC (@NorwichCityFC) February 21, 2020
There is some good news though, with Timm Klose stepping up training and edging closer to a return to the first team squad, hopefully in March.
Plenty of other City fans that I spoke to during the week thought that Emi Buendia should’ve started against Liverpool and he certainly should’ve come on earlier than he did. However, Farke explained more about his star man’s absence last week.
Emi Buendia is always in my thoughts. Last season we found it quite complicated to win games without him. I know the impact of Buendia. It’s a different level now though and Emi is unbelievably young. He’s now playing in the best league in the world.
I think he was fantastic at the start of the season, then had to wait on the sidelines for a while, but he came back with the perfect reaction. He’s finding it quite difficult to come back from his injury, but that happens with every player that young.
If we’re honest, against Newcastle Emi wasn’t himself. I got the feeling before Liverpool that he wasn’t completely 100%. We felt it wasn’t the right moment to bring him in against the best defenders in the world.
It’s important to be honest, it’s not about statistics, it’s about the teams success. It’s important we can’t forget that Buendia isn’t playing at this level like Lionel Messi does for Barcelona.
At the moment, he has to be 100% to make the difference. No one is more tempted to bring him back in the starting line-up than me, but I also have to protect him and make sure he plays him at his best.
It sounds as though Emi is struggling with reaching his best again, just a little, which isn’t great news because we need him if we’re going to pull off this little miracle.
As ever, if you’re going, have a great day out and sing the boys to victory.
OTBC