Good and bad news for Irish pair
Kevin Long and Jeff Hendrick are currently on international duty with the Republic of Ireland while team mate Jon Walters is back at Burnley after suffering a long term injury while on loan at Ipswich, but there has been news today of our two other Irish internationals Stephen Ward and Robbie Brady.
Ward, who has been a regular at left-back for almost three years, has played in only three of our Premier League games this season and hasn’t even made the bench recently. Neither was he called up for the recent internationals having recently won his 50th cap.
Sean Dyche suggested his absence from the bench was to give us more attacking options but Martin O’Neill revealed last week that the player has a knee injury. The local press suggested that he was facing surgery and today Burnley have confirmed this, revealing that he is now facing a period out of the team having had minor surgery.
Signed from Wolves in August 2014, he’s now passed 100 league appearances for us but his spell out of the team has given Charlie Taylor his opportunity and it’s now an opportunity he’ll continue to have until Ward is fully fit and able to challenge for the left-back position.
If that’s the bad news, then the good news came at Gawthorpe this afternoon when Burnley beat AFC Fylde 6-3 in a behind closed doors game. It signalled the latest return for Robbie Brady who not only got through the full ninety minutes but scored with his first touch of the ball.
In what was a very experienced team, our other goals came from Dwight McNeil, Mace Goodridge, Ashley Barnes (2) and Chris Wood.
Brady has had some setbacks on his road to recovery from the knee injury he sustained at Leicester at the beginning of December last year, but this is a real step forward and I’m sure, like Steven Defour, who also played, he’ll be available for the first team very soon.
Today’s team was: Tom Heaton, Phil Bardsley, Oliver Younger, Anthony Glennon, Ali Koiki, Dwight McNeil, Steven Defour, Mace Goodridge (Josh Benson 68), Robbie Brady, Chris Wood, Ashley Barnes.
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