This very long Twitter debate
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Is he extending his loan deal then?
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???
yes its a complete sentence fucking predictive computer,
On this day.
And LCDC both muted by official Saints media team.
On a Friday in October.
How many times do you need it explained?
Nine?
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Paywall but explains Sam McQueenâs nightmare
Can someone who has access summarise this?
Two years ago this week, Sam McQueen was preparing to play for Middlesbrough against Crystal Palace in the EFL Cup at the Riverside Stadium. The game was the last time McQueen, a Southampton defender who had been on loan in the north east, kicked a ball. What followed has been two years of agony.
As he tried to prevent Andros Townsend from reaching Jeffrey Schluppâs 29th-minute cross, the 25-year-old landed awkwardly and went down screaming in pain. He was stretchered off and the extent of his injury was confirmed two days later: he had ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL).
Jeremy Rushbrook, a consultant knee surgeon at the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth, tells The Athletic : âAn ACL injury is quite common for a footballer. Itâs usually a non-contact injury because you rotate on your leg in a way that can rupture the ligament. You will know itâs happened because there is a loud popping noise, you fall to the ground, the knee becomes swollen straight away and you are unable to carry on.
âYouâve got four major ligaments of the knee. You have two that run down either side, they are the collateral ligaments. And then youâve got two that cross in the centre of the knee, the cruciates. The collaterals give you side-to-side stability, and your cruciates give you front to back and rotational stability.â
ACL ruptures tend to be season-ending injuries for most players and McQueen wasnât any different. His campaign was over. The long road to recovery had begun. But the first port of call was the operating room.
With the surgery completed, McQueen was getting himself ready to embark on a rehabilitation schedule to fight his way back to fitness. However, as supporters will have noticed, we are yet to see him in action since that wretched night at the Riverside.
A quick return can see footballers back playing just after six months, although this is rare. You are normally looking at somewhere between nine to 12 months to recover in a way that reduces the risk of repeating the injury.
âYou go through different stages in your recovery,â Rushbrook explains, speaking in general terms about the schedule he gets his patients to follow, rather than McQueen specifically. âThe initial two weeks is a short rest to allow the wounds to heal to reduce the risk of infection. At two weeks, you go through a range of motion exercises and that takes you up to six weeks.
âYou can start building in some strength exercises at six weeks, which will be what we call âclosed-chain exercisesâ â your foot has to be fixed on a platform, a pedal or the ground. Nothing where your foot is dangling.
âAfter three months, you can start getting into more dynamic exercises on a trampette or gentle straight-line jogging. I would introduce twisting and turning at around six months. Football-specific training will be at nine months.
âSome people push players back at six months but your risk of re-rupture at six months is very high. I would always say it takes 12 months to recover to reduce your risk to a satisfactory level.â
By these metrics, the hope would have been for McQueen to resume playing this time last year. But that couldnât happen. Shortly after his knee was reconstructed, the screws holding everything in place became infected. Itâs worth noting this is one of the worst-case scenarios that can occur following surgery.
It meant McQueen had to start the whole process again, although this could only happen once the infection had cleared.
Asked generally whether he has come across screws becoming infected after surgery, Rushbrook tells The Athletic : âThese days itâs very, very uncommon.
âThere are things we do to reduce the infection rate. I do a lot of things they do in Australia because thatâs where I was trained. They are the world leaders in ACL reconstruction. They will soak the graft in an antibiotic during the operation because there is evidence that suggests doing so will reduce the chances of infection to practically zero.
âItâs very, very rare with modern techniques. To have an infected graft would mean you have been incredibly unlucky.â
When asked how he would treat a patient with infected screws, Mr Rushbrook added: âYou take everything out, pack the holes with bone graft, let them set and come back to do another ACL reconstruction later down the line. The âletting it setâ bit takes about six months, so itâs quite a big setback.â
Although itâs been a long, tough road back to fitness for McQueen, each day that passes is a step closer to kicking a ball again. Currently undergoing rehab at Southamptonâs Staplewood training ground, where he is back out on the pitch, the 25-year-old is doing all he can to return.
The Athletic understands McQueen will have to wait until at least January before he can have a football at his feet again. This traumatic saga, for a player whose Southampton debut was in 2014, has unquestionably halted his progress.
McQueen went on loan to Southend United in January 2016, making 18 appearances for the League One side and scoring twice, before returning to St Maryâs in the summer, which coincided with Claude Puelâs appointment as Southampton manager. The Frenchman trusted the defender enough to play him 20 times in his only season in charge, including a first start for the club at the San Siro against Inter Milan in the Europa League, the highlight of his career so far.
A couple of months later, in December 2016, he signed a four-and-a-half-year contract, extending his stay on the south coast to June 2021. When he signed the deal, McQueen expressed his joy, saying: âIt has been years and years of hard work to get to this point.
âIâm really happy to be out on the pitch playing games for the first team. The last couple of months have been amazing for me and this new contract really just rounds that off. Now I must keep working hard and make as much of an impression as I can.â
However, Puelâs replacement, Mauricio Pellegrino, played him just six times before being sacked in March 2018.
Mark Hughes was hired to guide the club to Premier League safety, with McQueen coming on in the 83rd minute during the clubâs 1-0 win at Swansea City, which all but sealed survival. Despite using him twice, Hughes allowed the academy product â who has been at Southampton since the age of eight â to go out on a season-long to Middlesbrough that summer. But after only seven games for Tony Pulisâs side, he ruptured his ACL and returned to St Maryâs.
It hasnât all been doom and gloom, though. McQueen, who is described as âone of the good guysâ, has started a family in the last 10 months after his partner gave birth to their first child. There has also been time for him to learn the piano.
With his Southampton deal expiring next summer, the future looks uncertain for the left-back. For his sake, it is hoped a contract extension â even if itâs only a year on the same terms â can be agreed.
The fact heâs been named in the clubâs 25-man Premier League squad shows Southampton still value him, which is also seen in their commitment to keeping him around the first-team environment, rather than cutting him adrift.
After everything he has been through over the last 24 months, he deserves the chance to show Ralph Hasenhuttl what he is capable of.
(Photo: James Bridle â Southampton FC via Getty Images)
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Daniel Sheldon joins The Athletic after spending two years working for the Southern Daily Echo. During his time at the newspaper, Daniel reported on Southampton FC. Follow Dan on Twitter @dansheldonsport .
Thanks for posting that.
Very bad luck with the infected screws or negligence?
Thanks for that
Sounds like a horror story. But always remember JRod & Ingsy made comebacks
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Dear James,
What you did at Villa Park today was simply phenomenal.
Most people wake up on their 26th birthday nursing a hangover. Not you. You woke up plotting Aston Villaâs downfall.
Southampton fans have come to love you for your shithousery, especially when Wilfried Zaha is on the receiving end, but you were known for your wonderful, exquisite set pieces first. And your performance in the barnstorming 4-3 win reminded everyone why youâre lethal with a dead ball at your feet.
Yes, your assist for Jannik Vestergaard to head home the opening goal was sumptuous. But your free-kick double before half-time will deservedly steal the headlines. Did you know youâre only the ninth player in Premier League history to score with two direct free kicks in a game?
Growing up at a time when David Beckham captured the imagination of every budding footballer, was it ever a surprise to see you fall in love with taking set pieces? After all, the former England captainâs right foot was seen as a thing of beauty by football fans in the same way the Mona Lisa captures the imagination of art lovers.
Unlike most of us, youâve made the transition from trying to avoid smashing your next-door neighbourâs greenhouse as a child to become one of the Premier Leagueâs best free-kick takers. But youâve had to work bloody hard for it.
Coming into a Southampton first team that included Rickie Lambert enabled you to learn the noble art of being trusted with set pieces from one of the clubâs most iconic players. And it only got better for you when a certain Ronald Koeman arrived at St Maryâs as manager in June 2014.
The Dutchman, a dead-ball expert as a player and now in charge of Barcelona, proved to be a fantastic influence on your quest to develop your technique. Marvelling at Koemanâs exploits on YouTube after training was done for the day further highlighted your ambition to strike fear into opposition managers when standing over a ball.
Even though your talent was there for all to see, you became labelled a âset-piece specialistâ. In other words, some felt you were a luxury player who didnât really fit into a succession of Southampton systems but were capable of a solid delivery.
Deep down, you knew you were more than that. It was just about getting the chance to prove it. Being used out wide by a string of managers was never going to help you do that, though.
When Ralph Hasenhuttl replaced Mark Hughes just under two years ago, you found yourself in another battle to show what youâre capable of. Picked as the 19th man for the trip to Huddersfield Town in the Austrianâs third game in charge was a humiliation that had you questioning your future at St Maryâs.
You stayed, though. And look at you now. Captain of a club youâve been at since childhood. The overwhelming joy, the goals, the assists, the passion, the commitment and, yes, the difficult moments from then to now will no doubt make for an elegant script one day.
Already with over 200 Premier League appearances to your name on the day you turned 26, who knows how many more free kicks youâll score for Southampton? One thing we do know is that you finally surpassed Matt Le Tissierâs Premier League club record of seven goals from direct free kicks.
And you did it by scoring Southamptonâs 1,000th and 1,001st Premier League goals. Hasenhuttl, the manager who made you skipper and picks you every week, was suitably impressed.
âIt is no coincidence that he is our captain now,â Hasenhuttl said. âHe is always a role model for what we are standing for: his work against the ball but also in possession. He is brave, and an unbelievable fighter.
âAt free kicks, he is amazing. He is getting better and better because, yeah, he develops his game and is open-minded. This is a good thing.â
The way you practice at Staplewood is geared towards making your free kicks count when the pressure is on. You donât see the value in taking a bag of balls to practise your speciality once training is over. Instead, youâll strike no more than a handful of them, maybe four or five.
Why? Well, how many meaningful free kicks will you get per game? This is the sort of detail which sets you apart from other set-piece takers in the Premier League.
After Sundayâs game, you spoke about how your little boy, Oscar, would be proud of your exploits at Villa Park. There was also the revelation that you are already teaching him to follow in your free-kick footsteps in the back garden.
Premier League goalkeepers of the future had better watch out.
Youâve proven yourself to be the heartbeat of Hasenhuttlâs Southampton team â the club you love â and letâs hope this is just the start of a magical campaign for you.
Yours truly,
Dan Sheldon, The Athletic
PS â Do you know whether Gareth Southgate was watching?
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Ings having op today out for 6 weeks
More to follow