Derek McInnes believes top-of-the-class Kyle Magennis deserves a reward for his dedicated fight back to full fitness.
The Kilmarnock manager reckons his midfielder is due some hard-earned respite after an agonising and lengthy period on the sidelines. Magennis hasn’t featured for Killie since last December as he battles to overcome a hamstring issue. The determined 26-year-old is working tirelessly to get himself back onto the scene for matchdays and bringing an end to his arduous spell out of action.
McInnes has paid tribute to the dedication and professionalism of his hard-grafting star as he scraps to make his comeback. He said: “He’s working so hard. It’s a joke. It sticks in my throat sometimes when you see boys abdicating their responsibilities and not fulfilling their talent. There’s a boy who is top of the class with everything he does. He’s ridiculous, he really is and he deserves some sort of reward for that.
“So, hopefully, if he gets a fair break with it now and hopefully he can get a wee bit of respite with it, he can just concentrate on playing a good footballer again and we can get away from talking about his injury situations. Everyone is trying to be positive.”
Magennis, who signed a two-year deal at Rugby Park after signing from Hibs in June last year has been close to first-team comebacks during his spell out, but setbacks have hindered him and he’s been unable to figure since coming off in a game against Livingston nine months ago.
Killie are determined to follow all advice to get him spot on and McInnes has outlined the depth of effort and care going into the recovery mission.
The manager said: “We are going through a course of work, of physiotherapy, modifying training, giving him wee bits and pieces trying to develop and build it up with a view of, hopefully, getting to the stage where, while we still understand there might be a need to look at his training week, he does become available for games. But, before he becomes available for games, he’s still two or three weeks away from that.
“So we are still patiently trying to do the right thing by him. There’s just been a wee bit of scarring in and around the main tear that he had, the significant tear that he had.
“So we feel as though the process we are going through at the minute is trying to help his workload and make sure he gets enough training days. We can control his training, so every movement is a bit more modified. You can throw into a game situation and there’s that unpredictability of movement, challenges, everything else. And we just feel, while his strength is as strong as it has ever been in terms of his hamstring strength, to actually support the actual area, it’s been put to us we need to try and just build the muscles around about.
“That’s a bit frustrating for me and Kyle because I want him available to us. But, hopefully by the time we come out of the next international break, Kyle will be available for us.”