Roy Hodgson
Roy Hodgson says he is unsure whether James Tomkins will be able to return to action for Crystal Palace this season, but says he is glad the defender has not been forced to retire after suffering a serious eye injury in training. Tomkins had been in decent form just a short time after returning from an injury that had seen him mists most of the current season, and Hodgson says that while he is unsure if the 31-year-old will be able to return this season, the club will not be rushing him back into football before he is completely ready to do so.
Roy Hodgson said: “I don’t know at the moment, because getting his eyesight back to what it should be is the all-important thing. He did need a minor operation underneath the eye to repair a bone which was trapping a muscle, which was affecting the eye’s ability to function properly. That eye operation was necessary. But as far as I know he hasn’t had an operation within the eye itself. All they can tell me, the experts, is that it’s a matter of time, really. It’s not a quick healing process, not a part of the body – certainly the face – that’s going to heal quickly when you get this sort of injury. All we can do at the moment is wait, rejoice in the improvement that we seem to be seeing on a daily basis. But then to suggest, ‘well, ok, because that’s happening and the eye is moving and the sight is returning to hopefully what it should be, he’ll be ready in X number of weeks’. It could take still a long period of time, but we’re ready for that. There’s no way he’s going to be rushed back into football until he is 100 per cent certain that ‘my eye is fine, my eyesight is going to be perfect again and I’m ready to play football’. I really can’t put a timescale on that because every time I ask the doctors and the specialists, they just reiterate: it was a nasty injury, you’ve got to give it the time it needs.”
Hodgson stated that Tomkins has been unable to do any physical work since undergoing the surgery, and that while he remains optimistic that the defender will be able to come back quickly, he is simply glad that the defender has not been forced into an early retirement.
Roy Hodgson said: “At the moment, the specialists don’t want him doing any physical training, any gymnasium work. At the moment he’s focused on his eye returning to normal. But we do hope, of course, as things get better he’ll get permission to start some sort of physical work to get himself back hopefully into a position where he might return. But we’ve got, what, three months left, is it, of the season? It’s certainly not going to be in the coming weeks, that’s for sure. But I remain optimistic, I remain hopeful. Most of all I remain glad that I’m not sitting here talking about James Tomkins who’s been forced to retire because of a really bad eye injury which he picked up in training. We do miss him. There’s no question of that. He was playing extremely well, he’s a real quality player. During one of our best spells in the time I’ve been here, it was Tomkins and Sakho who were our two central defenders, both were playing exceptionally well and we were doing well. Basically this year, I’ve seen neither of those players for any length of time, which is very unfortunate. And I am fortunate that we’ve brought in people like Gary Cahill, kept people like Scott Dann and Martin Kelly, and Cheikh Kouyate has shown he can be a centre-back. Because most teams who lose two players of Tomkins and Sakho’s ability perhaps would have felt it even more than we have.”
