Wolverhampton Wanderers striker Sasa Kalajdzic has detailed how they are working hard on his recovery from a serious knee injury as he looks to ensure he isn’t on the treatment table again in future.
The striker has been speaking to Sky Sports Austria about his injury recovery this season, having spent the whole campaign out injured following a move in the summer.
He joined Wolves in an €18m deal from VfB Stuttgart in the summer as they looked to bolster their forward line after struggles in that area.
However, he managed just one 45-minute appearance against Southampton at the beginning of the campaign before suffering a cruciate ligament rupture in that fixture that has kept him out for the remainder of this season.
That injury is the latest in a series of serious injury layoffs for the Wolves striker.
For example, he missed 20 games of the 2017/19 campaign with a metatarsal fracture while a cruciate ligament rupture in 2019/20 saw him miss 28 games for VfB Stuttgart.
This latest cruciate rupture has seen him spend 274 days on the treatment table and miss 37 games for Wolves, the worst lay off of his career to date.
It’s something the 25-year-old wants to avoid a repeat of in future, and he’s revealed the lengths they’re going to to ensure that.
“I want to get as much as possible from the preparation and next season, and Wolves medical department have been asking questions,” he said.
“Where did the first injuries happen, what happened? We’re still trying to work out the causes and the possible reasons why this could have happened.
“For myself, I try to ask the question every day, why, why this had happened. The bad luck was that it was no coincidence. It was supposed to happen. You can find many arguments and many reasons.
“Now we’re looking at my first knee injury. There’s my opponents, he fell really stupidly into my knee, and I think anyone would have injured the cruciate ligament in that instance. It’s stupid, stupid little things where you think to yourself, why did that happen to me, why does this happen to me so often?
“That’s what we are looking at. We are looking at what we can do better, and we are definitely working on it. So, as far as my physicality is concerned, we’re trying to get me to a level where I shouldn’t have any problems in the Premier League.
“I’ve never felt as strong as I am now. Just from a strength point of view, we’re working very, very hard in the weight room. Yes, I’ve been in rehab here longer than I was in Stuttgart, but I don’t want to talk it down.
“It’s just that the method we’re using now, that’s just not the same. I also talked to the trainers and physios in Stuttgart, and they found it interesting how the English approached it – there were differences.”
