Having spent more than three quarters of 2018 on the sidelines, it’s hardly surprising that Robbie Brady is like a dog with a bone.
The feisty Dubliner picked up a nasty knee injury in December 2017 in a Premier League game against Leicester and it effectively consigned his whole 2018 to the physio table and the ice baths.
Brady went on to miss out on the rest of Burnley’s 2017/2018 Premier League season, the majority of Ireland’s World Cup qualifying campaign and a whole host of Nations League games to boot.
But the complications weren’t over there.
This season began in that similar, injury-curtailed manner for the 26-year-old. He suffered a setback in pre-season and that saw him out of action for the first nine games of this season, not returning to his club’s starting lineup until late October.
And then, as luck would have it, just as he was settling himself back into the rigours of it all, injury came knocking on his door again. He suffered a tear of his adductor in training in December and he’s missed out on the festive period of games as a result.
Wednesday night against Huddersfield and Brady made his return to action in John Smith’s stadium after three weeks out but the Clarets may be without their man again. Less than half an hour after being introduced, the left wing back was shown a straight red card for a lunge from behind on Huddersfield’s Isaac Mbenza.
The former United player’s tackle was mistimed and it didn’t look good, but if the Match of the Day pundits Jermaine Jenas and Matthew Upson have their way, he won’t miss too much action for it.
Upson, a tough tackling centre half in his day, was on the fence, before being convinced by Jenas that the Irish man was hard done by.
Matthew Upson: “We were talking earlier Jermaine…I think it’s a really difficult one…”
Jermaine Jenas: “It’s not a red for me”
Upson: “He hasn’t launched two-footed off the ground, it’s a cynical foul because he knows he’s through but I don’t think that’s bad enough for a red card.”
Jenas: “Definitely not, I totally agree”
Time now for Burnley to appeal that red card on the grounds that it wasn’t overly dangerous and that Mbenza wasn’t clean through.
