Mendy will be writing a regular column for <em>The Times</em> detailing his road to recovery from a serious knee injury

Hello/hola/bonjour! It’s Benjamin Mendy here, writing to you from Dr Cugat’s clinic at the Quirónsalud hospital in Barcelona, where I’m doing the first stage of my recovery from my knee injury.

It’s one month to the day since I had the operation to fix the anterior cruciate ligament that I tore against Crystal Palace. I’ve decided to do a monthly column in The Times so I can share my journey back with you.

I’ve been working very hard and everything is going well so far. I decided to play a prank on Ilkay Gündogan, who has had an operation here, when I arrived. I rang him up pretending to be scared and asked him: “How big is that needle, bro?!”

The injury happened five weeks