Why Tony Pulis is yet to meet Tony Strudwick as new Sheffield Wednesday boss looks to iron out injury issue
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The 62-year-old, who became the club’s 16th permanent manager of the century when he replaced Garry Monk last week, followed his predecessor in urging the club to get to the bottom of a history with poor unavailability that stretches back several seasons.
Pulis has walked into a changing room without several key players, many of whom have been lost to ‘soft tissue injuries’ he believes are hugely avoidable.
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Hide AdAnd speaking to the assembled media at his first media engagement as Wednesday boss earlier this week, Pulis explained that while he was yet to speak to sports science head honcho Tony Strudwick, world-renowned as one of the best in the business, he has spoken to several other members of the club’s medical team.
Strudwick moonlights with the Welsh national team and has been a part of their three-match camp over the past fortnight.
“I haven’t met Tony yet,” Pulis said on Monday. “He’s away with the Welsh national team and he will be back in midweek. So I’ll have a good chat with him.
“I’ve had the medical team in today, the sports science people and have told them how I feel about certain things, especially soft tissue injuries.
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Hide Ad“If you speak to guys at other clubs you’ll know what I’m like with soft tissue injuries, it’s almost like a disaster for me. They’re avoidable injuries, if someone has a knee injury, ankle injury, shoulder, whatever, that happens. I can accept that.
“But muscular injuries, what we do now with the knowledge we have and the facilities we have and the people we have working at football clubs, we’ve got to try to stop soft tissue injuries.”
A number of key men have had spells out this season and Pulis reported further injuries this week.
He said: “We’ve been unfortunate in the last couple of weeks that we’ve picked up quite a few of these injuries. That has to stop.
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Hide Ad“We’re in a season where we’ve got a lot of matches coming up in a short space of time and we’ve got to do better than we have been doing in respect of protecting the players and looking after the players.”