Jermaine Beckford return still a week away

Wanderers will again be without top scorer Jermaine Beckford for tonight’s home game against Burnley as Dougie Freedman admits he could be another week away from a return.

Freedman had hoped the front man would be back at the weekend but his hamstring injury has not fully healed.

Freedman said: “Jermaine will miss out again.

“We have had some news over the weekend that it is going to be a little bit longer. We are looking at possibly another week.”

Source

I wish I could say this really surprises me but it doesn't. For some reason whenever one of our players is injured it seems to take an aeon or more for them to recover. Sean Davies, Stu Holden, Chungy Lee and now Jermaine Beckford. Normally a hamstring that has a "mild tear" as this was originally described requires four weeks for complete recovery AT MOST and that's without having the sort of medical treatment and rehabilitation therapy available to professional footballers today. 

Either the medical and phsiotherapy staff at Bolton are rubbish OR (and I suspect this is possible) Beckford isn't really trying as hard as he can to get fit because he doesn't want to play under DF's "system". The third option, one that I think is quite likely is that the club lied to the media and fans about the seriousness of the injury to begin with either because they wanted to try and sell Beckford in the window or they hoped he'd be fit much faster than usual and let them avoid getting a lot of flak for the Ngog and Cravies deals leaving us so short handed up front.

Beckford wasn't even a guaranteed starter when he was fit so I don't know why Dougie's making his return sound important.

Natasha Whittam wrote:Beckford wasn't even a guaranteed starter when he was fit so I don't know why Dougie's making his return sound important.

You have a point there Nat but I suspect had Beckford been fit earlier we would have still sent Ngog and Cravies out but not bothered bringing Jutkiewicz in. Also, Beckford was on a relatively decent run of form so I would guess DF was gambling on him getting back faster and continuing to get goals in a 4-5-1 which as we all know is the only formation any football team is allowed to play now after the official designation of 4-4-2 or any attacking style of any kind as 'dinosaur' play by the master (de)bater we currently have as our manager.