Crystal Palace must show Nathan Ferguson ‘how much we believe in him’, Roy Hodgson says

BY SAM SMITH

Nathan Ferguson will overcome any mental effects suffered due to his injury nightmare if Crystal Palace “show how much we believe in him”, Roy Hodgson has said.

The defender is yet to play for the South Londoners since his summer move from West Bromwich Albion. He arrived on a free transfer with a pre-existing knee injury and then suffered a serious thigh strain as he stepped up his recovery.

Hodgson was asked how Palace will help the 20-year-old move on from the trauma of spending so long out injured. Thursday will mark a year since Ferguson last played a competitive game of football.

“The only way to keep him on board is to show how much we believe in him, how much we think he is going to be an important player for this football club, and how sympathetic we are with him over the injuries. The second one is a totally different problem to the knee injury that he came with,” Hodgson said.

“Luckily, he is a very strong young man. He’s strong minded. Whenever I see him – obviously he doesn’t spent a lot of time out on the training field at the moment, he’s usually in the medical centre to get treatment – he’s always got a big smile on his face. He always shows optimism joie de vivre, which is quite fantastic.

“That’s an important quality, because that’s the kind of quality that he is going to need when, very soon we hope, he is able to join us in training. He’ll have been out for a long time and will be a little bit ring-rusty in that respect.

“But we will know that this horrible period that he has had to endure is coming to an end, that there is some light at the end of the tunnel, and all we can do is encourage him to embrace that light at the end of the tunnel and to put it behind him, which is going to take an awful amount of mental resilience. I think this particular young man has that.”