Ex-Wolves physio backs Jonny Castro Otto for a swift return

The defender has had a torrid two years after injuring his anterior cruciate ligament in August 2020 before suffering from the same injury in the same knee – alongside a medial collateral ligament injury – in April last year just eight games into his return. But Jonny has since fought back again and after weeks of training the Spaniard has been on the bench for Wolves’ last two games. He is yet to play but Darby, who worked at Wolves for nine years, expects he will be ready to go with Premier League fitness his only barrier.

“You don’t really have to manage game-time for the injury, because once he gets to the stage where he has a shirt on, then he is fit to play – if he isn’t then obviously he shouldn’t have the shirt on,” he said.

“So he will be fit to play and has been in contact training. He’s effectively had a pre-season but hasn’t had games, so he will be short of sharpness and fitness for the Premier League.

“But regarding the injury, he should be ready to go, however they will have to manage him as he won’t be ready for 90 minutes.

“It’s a little unusual that he hasn’t played for the under-23s, but with the way Bruno Lage does a lot of 11 against 11 training, he will get some benefit from that.”

This time Jonny’s rehabilitation period has been much longer and Darby believes that cautious approach should leave him in good stead.

“He came back from the first injury after 180 days and I remember thinking that was quite a short rehab period for such an intensive injury, which flagged up a question mark for me,” he added.

“After the recurrence of the injury this current rehabilitation has been much longer, more than 300 days, which would indicate they have had to extend it, which is about right.

“It’s not a good idea to re-injure your ACL, that’s why players often take an extensive period to get it back to full fitness.

“But his rehabilitation now has been long enough to recover and he wouldn’t resume contact training until they were 100 per cent sure it was strong and stable.

“He’s not being rushed back, if anything they are being very cautious with it.”

Pedro Neto is also working on his comeback after fracturing his kneecap in April last year.

The winger has suffered setbacks with his recovery and Darby says it could still take some time before he is ready to play.

“At the back of my mind I didn’t think he would play this season,” he said.

“You definitely cannot fracture your patella twice, a recurrence of that would be a big problem after surgery, so you have to be really careful.

“In my experience the rehabilitation is never straightforward with this type of injury because the patella itself is like a pulley system over your knee that takes immense stress from the big quad muscles.

“The good news is there is no reason why he shouldn’t make a full recovery but the timescale is a tricky one.

“He may get some games towards the end of the season, perhaps April. But the most important thing is pre-season and with an injury like this he won’t have done a huge amount of work until now.

“It is a good sign he is back on the grass and he might come back earlier, but it’s a really unusual and difficult injury.

“Neto is also a very dynamic and quick player, so it has to be right before he can come back and play.”