Birmingham City injury latest ahead of their first game of the new Championship season, away at Swansea City
Birmingham City boss John Eustace is preparing to lead Blues to Swansea City on the first day of the new Championship season without winger George Hall and new signing Ethan Laird as the young pair recover from their respective injury issues.
Blues will take on the Swans in their opening league game of the new season before making for Cheltenham again in the EFL Cup next Tuesday. Their first home game, set to be attended by new owner Tom Wagner, is against Leeds United the following weekend. Ahead of kick off, Eustace delivered a fitness update on his squad having come through pre-season.
Right-back Laird, a signing from Manchester United, missed the friendly at Peterborough, while Hall has been struggling with an ankle issue. Both are doubts to be involved at Swansea, although a host of other first-team players, including Krystian Bielik and Koji Miyoshi, have come through a behind closed doors friendly in the week.
“The two boys [Laird and Hall], they’re still struggling a little bit,” Eustace said.”Krystian, Koji and Gary Gardner all played on Tuesday behind closed doors. Krystian played last week against Peterborough, it was his second set of minutes in pre-season so it was important we got more minutes into his legs.
“Koji has done really well to get back into the squad for Saturday. He got a very important 45 minutes in on Tuesday, and so did Jukey and Gary Gardner. To get Gary Gardner back on the football pitch is a massive boost for everyone, he had a terrible time with injuries last season and the progression he’s made in the last six weeks is very good and very exciting. Hopefully he can keep getting vital minutes going forward.”
Indeed Eustace agrees with the notion that Gardner, who made just eight league appearances last year having been hit hard by injury, could be considered a cliched ‘new signing’ once he returns – a prospect which hopefully isn’t too far away now.
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