Lee Bowyer delivers Lyle Taylor & Maxime Colin fitness update, slams ‘load of rubbish’ intense training claims

Birmingham City manager Lee Bowyer has provided a fitness update on injured duo Maxime Colin and Lyle Taylor following Blues’ 2-0 defeat to Huddersfield Town.

Taylor had to withdraw from the starting eleven prior to the game after pulling up in the warm up whilst Colin suffered a non-contact injury midway through the first-half and was replaced by Ivan Sunjic.

“Probably a thigh strain,” Bowyer said of Colin.

“Don’t know how long he’s going to be out.

“Lyle has had a bit of a tight groin for a few games now. Obviously when he came, same as Bacuna, they hadn’t played many minutes.

“He’s been great for us but he’s got a little bit of a tight groin that he’s had and we’ve been managing that.

“In the warm up it just went a bit tight, like really tightened up, so obviously him and Max will have to go for scans on Monday.”

With the Blues seemingly never ending injury woes, there have been fair claims by some that the problem lies deeper than simply bad luck.

Bowyer’s training methods have been questioned, as they were during his time at Charlton Athletic but the gaffer emphatically shot down any slither of that being a possibility.

No it’s not, that’s rubbish,” he claimed when asked if his training was too intense.

“Someone said that at the Q&A thing the other day about the intensity of training, it’s a load of rubbish.

“I’ve trained myself for 18 years and I know if we’re over training and the intensity. If you can’t train the way we train then how can you perform the way we perform with the intensity.

“We don’t over train at all. Not at all.

“If anything now we’re probably going the other way because we are so scared because we keep getting injuries so we are coming off them more.

“We’re training for like an hour a day that’s including the warm up.

“I’m not having that at all it’s a load of rubbish.

“When I was a player you’d train morning and afternoon certain days, we don’t do that. So no, I’m not having that we over train and the intensity.

“The intensity is what you have to do anyway, every day. You telling me Man City and top sides there’s no intensity? You think they train slowly and nicely from Modnay to Friday and then Saturday go a 100 miles per hour and press the way they do. No chance. That’s every day.

“If we’ve got anyone that can’t handle what we’re doing at the moment, we’re in trouble.”

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