Marc Isaacs
Wednesday February 28, 2007
The Guardian
Tottenham Hotspur's captain, Ledley King, has been building up his fitness by swimming in an effort to make a first-team comeback in the next month. The England defender has suffered a nightmare season having sustained a knee problem at the start of the campaign and then picking up a foot injury on Boxing Day.
There were fears he would miss the rest of the campaign after scans revealed he had a stress fracture in his left foot. But King is making steady progress in his rehabilitation and revealed yesterday that a combination of running and swimming has kept him on course for a return before the end of next month.
"I have surprised myself at swimming and done better than I thought I would. I am sticking in there. I find it tough, but it is good fitness work. I can't say I enjoy it, but there are not too many black swimmers that I know, so maybe there is hope for me," said King.
"At the moment I am just running every other day, and in between that I'm doing bike work and swimming. It is about building up my fitness without overloading the foot. It seems to be going well at this point, but I thought that last time as well. I was ready to come back and then had a bad reaction. I'm taking it quite slowly now and hoping that my foot withstands it this time.
"I realise that after two months or so of being out that it is not going to be so easy for me to just jump back into training. I tried to come back last time after three or four weeks, so this time I am that much further behind and have to do a bit more to build myself back up to the level of full training.
"We've spoken about it and I will spend next week running to build up my fitness and, depending on how that goes, we will take it from there. If all goes well, I hope to be back at some time in March."
West Ham United's former midfielder, Sir Trevor Brooking, believes his old club need to work a miracle if they are to avoid relegation from the Premiership. West Ham sit one place off the foot of the table and are nine points behind the fourth- bottom club, Wigan Athletic.
Brooking, the director of football development at the Football Association, said: "It's going to be difficult when you look at the run-in. They have to go to Spurs on Sunday and they have still to play Chelsea, Manchester United and Ars*nal. We are all very concerned. I go to quite a few games, but it is not for me to get involved - it is a new regime now."
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