I watched Sven Botman return for Newcastle United after nine-month injury blow – here are my honest thoughts.
After exactly nine months out Newcastle United defender Sven Botman marked his return from an ACL injury on Monday night.
The 24-year-old has been training with the Newcastle first team for the best part of a month and has even played some 11-a-side practice matches at Darsley Park. So there was a degree of confidence and even expectation when Botman was named in the starting line-up for Newcastle Under-21s against their Chelsea counterparts at Whitley Park.
Botman hadn’t played in a competitive setting since the 2-0 FA Cup defeat at Manchester City back in March. It may have only been a crowd of 596 for The Young Magpies’ 3-2 win at Whitley Park on Monday evening but the match represented a significant physical and mental hurdle for the defender to overcome 275 days on from his previous playing appearance in public.
As expected, Botman started in his natural left centre-back position and took just a couple of minutes to pick out striker Ben Parkinson with a trademark drilled forward pass. Parkinson scored twice in the opening 15 minutes before Charlie McArthur put the hosts 3-0 up in the second half.
Botman’s distribution, for the most part, was comfortable and solid with the exception of one poorly misplaced pass in the first half. That pass put Chelsea on the attack and may well have been punished in a Premier League match but Botman quickly redeemed himself moments later with an excellent defensive header to deny the visitors what looked to be a likely goal.
A lack of match sharpness may have been evident on a couple of occasions during his pre-planned hour on the pitch as he was dragged out of position once in the first half but most importantly he left the field unscathed and with a clean sheet to boot. It was perhaps no coincidence that after Botman’s withdrawal, Newcastle conceded twice late on as Chelsea made the scoreline look less convincing than Newcastle’s performance suggested.
The next step for Botman now is to break back into the first team. Last season the defender recovered from his first ACL injury but struggled to get back up to speed before suffering a second such injury that required surgery and ultimately kept him out until Monday night. A return to first-team action could still be weeks away with the club understandably being particularly cautious and following the injury protocol to the letter.
