Details about Wesley’s recovery and return have been difficult to come by, but how far away is he from a return to the match day squad?

It has been 405 days since Aston Villa’s Wesley Moraes suffered his ACL injury due to a challenge by Burnley’s Ben Mee. Aston Villa fans apart from a few Instagram videos and vague updates from Dean Smith, are in the dark regarding this injury. Why is it taking so long? Will he ever play again? Will he be as good?

First, let’s look at the mechanism of the injury. It is caused by direct trauma when the knee is extended. The striker and Mee were both sprinting when the challenge came in, as the picture below shows his knee extended and this coupled with the force of the tackle and speed in which it occurred, led to the awful injury for Wesley.

Following the injury large amounts of swelling will develop, resulting in a decreased range of movement and eventually muscle weakness as the person is unable to use their leg.

Photo: Transfer Tavern

The ACL itself is a band of tissues joining the thigh bone to the shin bone at the knee joint. It is crucial for the use of the leg, it inhibits excessive movement of the tibia from the femur. Which essentially means it prevents the shin from sliding forwards. It provides a large amount of stability to the leg. Clearly demonstrating why injuring it is so devastating, especially for someone in professional sport. It involves and long and thorough rehabilitation period, but what exactly does this consist of and how long should it take?

The rehabilitation period is outlined here:

First 3 months: Initial rehab

• Range of movement exercises, focusing on contracting the quadriceps without resistance to see how weak the muscles are.
• Gait re-education (rehabbing the walking pattern)
• Full range of movement (quadricep strength at 80%)
• Further increase quadricep strength, start running and working on agility
• Work in straight lines to avoid cutting movements
• High demand activity

3-6 months: Return to play

• Progressing from treadmill to field activities
• Sport specific drills
• Players practice the sport 2-3 months before a comeback
• Work on increasing match sharpness

These are rough guidelines and are player dependent, but how was Wesley’s rehabilitation been progressing? From Wesley’s Instagram videos we can see in early November he had completed his gait re-education work as he began to start running. On the 6^th November he was videoed running on a treadmill, and then by the 17^th November he was on the field working in straight line patterns.

The progress is clear to see as you compare his running mechanics from the 30^th November and 18^th December. Wesley is becoming faster and beginning to get back to speed. The issue is due to being in professional sport there are several things that must be done. Strength and reconditioning to ensure this does not happen again, as well as fitness levels and retraining the cognitive areas of his game.

Welsey needs full match sharpness before he can return to the side and contribute. Further progression is clear as he moves through his recovery. From December intensity has increased massively, his trainers can be heard telling him to “accelerate” in December which shows they were pushing him more. On the 17^th May it was mainly football skills and the 23^rd May they were working on increasing his power.

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A post shared by Wesley Moraes (@wesleymoraes07)

Wesley has progressed from running, to basic activities and is now working on the specific aspects of his game that need to be perfected in order for him to return to the highest level. Biomechanically, Wesley has probably recovered now, but with so long out the only thing preventing his return currently is retraining the football aspect of his game.

Returning to an elite level of sport takes much longer than just a normal individual. He will also have to retrain the mental aspect of his game; such a big injury can be mentally damaging, but he must learn to trust the knee whilst running and performing football activities such as shooting. You can also hear Wesley actively being out of breath during the videos, the fitness is another issue that he will face and will come with time.

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A post shared by Wesley Moraes (@wesleymoraes07)

Wesley has probably faced some potential setbacks in his recovery. Seeing both his team struggle without a striker and his team succeed with a new striker in the form of Ollie Watkins must be difficult for him.

Studies have shown ACL re-injury rate as being up to 13% and can also lead to an early retirement due to ACL related injuries such as osteoarthritis. Welsey’s rehabilitation process has been much longer than usual, however, it is imperative that Wesley is not rushed back. The question is, will he return to be the player he once was and showed in glimpses of games such as Everton, Norwich and Burnley?