Head of Medical and Sports Science Stijn Vandenbroucke issues his latest update – with Spire Roding Hospital...

Hello everyone,

I will start by updating on Andy Carroll, who picked up a injury earlier this year. We got Andy fit enough to face Middlesbrough and then also to face Southampton, but the West Bromwich Albion game came too quick and Andy is now working towards the Watford game.

Aaron Cresswell did not train for most of last week with an injury, trained on Friday and was made available for selection on Saturday.

Unfortunately, he took another knock which took him out of the game at half-time, so we will see how he progresses over the next few days. We anticipate that he will be available to face Watford.

Arthur Masuaku is back in full training with the first-team squad, having trained with the PL2 squad for ten days.

As the fans who attended the Family Fun Day will have seen, Diafra Sakho started running on the pitch on earlier this week as he continues his rehab from back surgery. However, it will be some time before he is fit enough to be available to selection.

Havard Nordtveit, Sam Byram and Alvaro Arbeloa are all fit and have traveled with the squad to Dubai, where they will benefit from the warm-weather training camp.

Angelo Ogbonna is progressing well, no longer requires crutches and is walking normally following his knee surgery. He was at London Stadium working on building up his rehab on Wednesday.

We traveled to Dubai overnight on Wednesday and unfortunately the forecast is for rain over the four days we are there, but it still represents a change of scenery for the squad and a possibility for us to work intensively with the players who need some extra fitness work.

Stijn Vandenbroucke

Head of Medical and Sports Science