Expert provides view on injured Wolves duo

Key players Neto and Otto have undergone knee operations – after the former fractured his patella and the latter injured his anterior cruciate ligament for a second time.

And Darby, who worked at Wolves for nine years, has now explained the complex issues and how they will affect each player.

On Neto, he said: “The patella is a piece of rubbery-type bone in your kneecap and it would normally dislocate rather than fracture.

“It’s a little bit more unusual to have a fracture.

“I saw the incident and, as often happens with these, it didn’t look that big a trauma.

“It’s an important piece of bone, really, because it sits within the patella tendon, which is part of your quadriceps – the big muscles at the front of your leg.

“It’s part of a mechanism to make sure your knee bends and straightens properly.

“It’s a very important part of your knee anatomy.”

Neto sustained his injury in the 1-0 win at Fulham last Friday.

He was forced off in the 33rd minute before taking to the stands and watching the rest of the game with ice taped around his left knee.

A scan over the weekend then revealed the extent of the injury, and Darby is not surprised by that chain of events.

“That does bear out. It’s not the kind of injury where you’ll go off on a stretcher and go straight to hospital,” he said.

“It would still have a certain level of functionality but the following day, he’s probably had some swelling and pain, and needed it scanning.

“It’s not a hard bone like your tibia or fibula. It’s a bit more complex than that, really.

“It’s got edges and grooves to help with the flexion and extension of your knee.

“So, I’m not surprised the diagnosis came from a scan afterwards.

“You can’t let that go. They’ve done well to pick it up and get it dealt with. You can’t leave it that long.

“It needs to be dealt with straight away, so they were on the ball with that one.”

Otto, meanwhile, seriously injured his right knee again during training – the day before the 3-2 loss to West Ham.

He originally suffered an anterior cruciate ligament injury last August and took six months to recover.

This time around, he has had surgery on his ACL and medial collateral ligament, which Darby says is ‘pretty standard’ – although suffering a recurrence is the ‘last thing you want’.

“That’s not unusual. That’s pretty standard, really,” said Darby, on Otto having both his ACL and MCL operated upon.

“When you have an ACL injury, the structure is joined to your medial collateral ligament – and the medial meniscus.

“So, you often get this triad where if you damage one, you damage the other two. That’s not unusual.

“But the last thing you want with an ACL is a recurrence.

“It’s unlikely to be a failure of the first surgery, although I was surprised with how quickly he came back.

“A recurrence is nasty. It’s required surgery and the golden rule is that if you’ve reinjured something, it extends the recovery time considerably.

“That will be a challenge for him until the back end of the year, I would have thought.”

Darby, who has also worked with golfers since his time at Wolves, added on Otto’s latest setback: “If you look at Virgil van Dijk, that was in September or October, and they’re talking about him hopefully being fit for pre-season or the start of next season.

“So, he came back relatively quickly. But I don’t think that should be an indication of poor rehab. They’ll have good enough tools to test and monitor.

“My experience is that a recurrence of an ACL problem on the same knee would have happened regardless of whether they had one beforehand. It’s a difficult one.”