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Opinion: After injury scare, Blues need to think carefully about how they deal with youngsters

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It’s not a total disaster just yet, but I’d wager good money that a few of you were holding your breath when you saw him taken off the pitch on Saturday.

Jake Clarke-Salter has found himself in the wars yet again as he picked up a knock to his knee during Saturday’s pulsating 3-3 draw with Sheffield Wednesday and had to be replaced by captain Harlee Dean. Speaking after the game, Blues boss Pep Clotet gave an update on Clarke-Slater’s fitness and pointed out that withdrawing him was merely a precaution and shouldn’t be too much of a concern to Blues fans:

“Jake had a knock on the knee, and for a precaution we subbed him. We will assess it on Monday. He was beginning to limp a bit, but he could probably have finished the game”.

This just goes back to what I was saying on Saturday about Geraldo Bajrami being loaned out, and whilst it doesn’t sound like the ordeal was too bad given that he apparently could have finished the game, it goes to show just how dangerously close we could have been to having a long-term problem at centre-back.

Were we right to send Bajrami out on loan?

Yes

No

That’s why I still maintain that it was a bit of a brave and incredibly risky decision to let Bajrami leave in the first place, because I foresaw something like this happening, although I didn’t quite expect it to come quite so soon after the event, even if the vast majority of fans think that it was the right decision to make, presumably for the sake of his long-term development.

There is still a lot of football to be played this season, and hopefully we can get through it without having another Josh McEachran or a Maikel Kieftenbeld type of incident occur, but even then an injury doesn’t have to be that bad for it to have a major impact on the season.

And with so few centre-backs on the books, we really could end up scraping the barrel for bodies if things don’t go quite right for us on that front.

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2 comments

  • tracey tyler says:

    To be honest Clarke Salters injury was a result of him trying to play like Franz Beckenbauer which he clearly is not and because of that he got caught out more than once on Saturday, he is far better playing like he has for most of the season instead of trying to be too intricate but he is still young and will learn by his mistakes. Roberts is the big worry for me as his distribution is awful.

  • Alwaysablue says:

    Another hindsight headline with no meaning

    Could you not get a decent positive debate going?

    Bless are not going down and are preparing for next season and the youngster will benefit from the loan.

    Alwaysablue

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