Two of United’s longer-term injured will take another significant step towards a return to full fitness next week as they head down to St George’s Park for an intensive spell of rehab.
Brennan Dickenson and Josh Dixon, both on the road back from ACL ruptures, will go the specialist football facility where they will undergo a series of sessions each day which are designed to step up the process.
“They’re both doing really well, but this is the next stage for them,” gaffer Paul Simpson explained. “They’ve got all the facilities at St George’s, but I’ve got to say, we’ve got really good facilities here in terms of our gym equipment.
“They’ll be put through some really intense work, three or four sessions a day, because they stay on site there. They get worked to death to be honest with you, which is brilliant.
“There’s a good group of staff there who work with the PFA rehab group, and it’s just an intense opportunity to get loads and loads of work into them, lots of one to one attention.
"I know when we had a player went there recently it was brilliant, the work they did, they really came on strong from it. Hopefully that will be the same for these guys.”
“Ryan Edmondson and Taylor Charters are still a long way from being involved with us,” he confirmed. “Scott Simons has had his surgery and he’s at the start of his recovery now. He’s quite a number of weeks away.
“We’ve just got to wait and see how they all go. Jack Ellis is the closest to returning but certainly won’t be ready for Saturday or Tuesday I wouldn’t think.
“I think Harrogate will be the earliest we could consider him. He joined in the first part of the session today [Thursday], the warm up and a simple passing drill, to get him integrated back in, then he went off with Chris Brunskill and did some more fitness work.
“We’ll assess him and see whether he’s ok to join in with the rest of the group, with it being a matchday minus one we won’t do a hell of a lot tomorrow, it’s whether or not he can join in that and do some extra.”
