Ipswich Town defender Dara O’Shea has addressed the ongoing back problem he’s been suffering with for more than six weeks.
The 25-year-old defender has been battling a back injury since the Blues’ 4-1 loss to West Ham at the start of October.
Despite the issue, O’Shea helped Town secure a point at home to Manchester United yesterday and played the full 90 minutes at Portman Road.
The Irish international said: “I’m definitely making progress. It was a bit of a tough one.
“Obviously your back’s hard because you can’t really rest it as such. I was given the all-clear to play with it and to manage it training and the club has helped me really well with that.
“I think I’m coming towards the end of that now, which is promising for myself, I just hope I don’t get smashed in the back again and go back to the start.
“I had a fracture in a part of my back, the transverse part of my back. I don’t know the full ins and outs, I’m not a physio, but I was told it was a fracture, so that’s what it was.”
Marcus Rashford scored for the Red Devils after only 80 seconds in Ruben Amorim’s first game as head coach.
However, Town equalised through Omari Hutchinson’s first Premier League goal just before half-time and the hosts had chances to win it in the second half as Andre Onana produced some key saves.
On conceding early, O’Shea said: “I think it was a bit of a shock to ourselves, it was a break in play and we can definitely deal with it better but I think how we reacted after that is really promising and shows what we’re about.
“We didn’t let that dictate the game because it was so early on, which is big for us. I think in the first half, especially early on, we didn’t implement ourselves as much as we could have. We can definitely run a lot more and the second half was a bit of a graft too.”
On Hutchinson’s goal, he added: “I was right behind it, to be fair, so it was nice to witness that.
“But you see that so often on the training pitch, you’re just waiting for that to go in. Any time he shapes up on the left foot, you’re almost expecting that from him.
“Credit to Omari, he literally trains like he plays, so what the fans see of him, that’s how he trains and that’s a credit to him, and that’s why he’s going to go to the very, very top because he has that mentality.
“He really wants to improve as a player, obviously he’s young but he’s got a good head on his shoulder, so if he keeps going and putting the performances in like he has today, he’s got a great career ahead of him.”
