Eddie Howe will be very relieved that come the beginning of next season, he can expect to have his most of his full starting XI and squad available to him.
Though Lewis Hall’s return date isn’t clear despite his return to light training, one man who is fully fit again for our pre-season campaign and beyond is Joelinton.
The big Brazilian missed the tail end of last season, and he was sorely missed, as our form did indeed suffer without our primary enforcer in midfield.
But having returned to the pitch in Saturday’s behind—closed-doors friendly against Carlisle, Joelinton has been discussing his recent knee issues and injury frustrations.
For the second season in a row, Joelinton was robbed of being involved in our final run in of fixtures, missing all of our last five games due to a knee issue.
Last year, he made an immediate impact with the only goal in an opening day win over Southampton, and the former Hoffenheim man will be hoping to have a similar impact this August.
He’s declared himself “fully fit”, but admits it has been a tricky road to get back to this point.
_“I’ve had a long time to recover. The start of it was very difficult as, personally, I was very frustrated about the injury at the end of the season._
_“There was a lot of important games and I could have been with the team. I was very sad but I knew I had to step out and recover because of my knee as I couldn’t help the team in the way I wanted.”_
We’ve seen in the past for players like Joelinton and Sven Botman that being rushed back from injury almost never has a positive outcome, so it’s a relief to see that the team decided not to risk the Brazilian.
_“It was the best decision and I had enough time to recover and come back, starting with the guys in pre-season.”_
_“My knee is good, I feel fully fit and happy. Injuries are not what you want but they can happen in football sometimes and you just have to deal with them and do everything you can to be fit. I now hope to have a season without injuries.”_
Our first ‘game’ game of pre-season took place over the weekend, with a behind-closed-doors friendly against Carlisle United.
And we ran riot against Mark Hughes’ Cumbrians, with Joelinton getting in on the action with 45 minutes played and a goal to his name in a 4-0 win.
Also on the scoresheet were Sean Longstaff, Jacob Murphy and Ben Parkinson, each of whom we can expect to get some good minutes in the coming weeks ahead of our upcoming tour of Asia.
