Adelaide United’s underdone recruit Lloyd Owusu is unlikely to make his Hyundai A-League debut until Round 4 with visa delays and a recent bout of swine flu ruining his pre-season.
Owusu, who only this week emerged from his home quarantine, will begin light duties with the Reds next Monday and is behind the rest of the team in fitness and conditioning.
Coach Aurelio Vidmar said he’d be easing his new player into training and expects he won’t be ready to play for another 6-8 weeks.
“Firstly it’s good to see he’s come out of his cave, it’s been a quite frustrating couple of weeks for him but that’s something out of his control, out of our control,” he said.
“He’s probably had a bigger break than he normally would’ve had at the end of his English season so he still needs a fair bit of conditioning and certainly we don’t want to push him too early and try to force him and rush him back into the team where he might end up getting extra niggles.”
“We are going to be extra cautious with him and if it takes us six, seven, eight weeks then that’s how it is.”
“It’s a setback, it’s not ideal but there’s not much we can do about it.”
Owusu described his bout of swine flu as a ‘horrible’ experience but was looking forward to building up his fitness in the coming weeks.
“Don’t get me wrong, every player wants to play as many games when they can but unfortunately with myself and the circumstances that have happened it’s unlikely I’m going to be able to do that,” Owusu said.
“I’ve got to make sure I watch the way I train over the next few weeks and hopefully we’ll take it from there.”
“It’s been frustrating, it’s been three weeks of sitting on my own, sitting in the room watching TV, same old TV every day, Oprah every afternoon.”
Owusu is not the only United player struggling with fitness as Fabian Barbiero (groin) and Daniel Mullen (hamstring) are also on the injury list.
These setbacks, along with a lack of practice matches against A-League opponents, have ensured last year’s grand finalists have not had the ideal preparation for the season.
Vidmar conceded the Reds might be slow starters in 2009-10.
“It will realistically take us three or four weeks before we hit our straps in terms of solid match practice,” he said.
Meanwhile, Adelaide did have some good news to reveal on Tuesday with CEO Sam Ciccarello announcing home renovation company Modern Solar was the club’s new major sponsor this season. Ciccarello said the one-year deal was worth ‘definitely over six figures’.
