Stoke City key man takes step closer to ending 10-month injury nightmare
Ben Pearson ‘feels right’ as he takes a step closer to a Stoke City comeback.
The 30-year-old midfielder came through his first 45-minute outing for the under-21s last week some 10 months on from when he limped out of his last first team game with a hamstring injury. He is set to play again tonight at Reading (7pm) in hope he can then gradually come back into Mark Robins’ thinking for the senior team.
Robins has missed experience in his squad after taking over on New Year’s Day, with Sam Gallagher and Ben Gibson also among those sidelined, and he understands it is imperative not just to get them back fit but to get them back fit for a long while.
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He said: “I think he’s a really good player anyway and the big thing for us and for him is to make sure he’s on the pitch for a long period of time.
“Injuries are part and parcel of the game but you’re hoping that people can be available more often than not. I think he’s been 10 months out and he’s been really unfortunate with it because he had a recurrence of an injury, I believe.
“He feels different now. You know yourself when you’re feeling right. He feels right and hopefully now we can get him back sooner rather than later. That’ll be down, to a degree, down to Ben and how he is mentally and physically.”
Pearson’s injury needed off-season surgery but an expected comeback in the autumn was put back when he suffered a minor recurrence. He was back on the bench on Saturday against Oxford, as well as Gibson, but there were six other senior players still missing.
A hectic first team schedule, quiet under-21s fixture list and a tight squad hit by injuries has made it difficult to get the minutes on the pitch that are needed for players like him and Bosun Lawal, who is also set to play at Reading.
But he played without any problems last mid-week at Rochdale, with Robins saying: “He came through all right. He worked hard, as you’d expect, and he’s in a miles better place than he was. Mentally it will have done him the world of good to get 45 minutes under his belt.
“Pearo is a really good player at the level, really experienced. I used to watch him as a kid when I would go to do some work for MUTV and I watched him come through. He was always someone who impressed me and then he was a stalwart for Preston, a really good player. We’ve missed him at Stoke but we’ve missed the likes of Sam Gallagher and Million Manhoef as well. The players that are injured, you miss them.
“Tom Cannon going back and then going on to Sheffield United is another blow that we’ve had to suffer but those challenges represent opportunities for everyone else. We’ve got Nathan back in the building and he’s one of ours and we can develop him and help him to grow as much as we can. We want him to be the finished article now and although he’s not he’s come on leaps and bounds from when he went out for a spell that has done him the world of good at Walsall.
“Then I’ve got to make sure that we’ve got him fresh for as often as we can. It was a quick turnaround (last week) and we had the travel down to Portsmouth but he got on and had some minutes, put himself about in that game and he’s a real talent and someone who we’ve got to try to nurture and look after and bring on as best we can.”
Stoke under-21s return to action with a bang this week, with the Reading game in Premier League 2 tonight followed by a Staffordshire Senior Cup tie at Newcastle Town tomorrow and a rearranged away trip to West Ham United in PL2 on Friday.
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