I will come back stronger, says Ings

This is a footballer who, after all, was playing on loan at Dorchester Town in Conference South five years ago, who was earning £70 a week, which barely covered the costs of his commute from Southampton to Bournemouth, where he trained at the time. He has known rejection and injury along the way and overcome them all and, for that reason, he says his latest injury holds no fear for him.

We had arranged to speak long before that moment on Wednesday at Melwood when Ings heard his left knee click as he pushed off to cut in with the ball, and there are many footballers who, understandably, would be reluctant to go ahead with this interview. But Ings sees things differently – he is injured and there is nothing he can do about that, other than make his rehabilitation and time out of the game as positive an experience as possible.

After all, he has a new manager to impress, just like every one of his Liverpool team-mates, and while he cannot be in Jürgen Klopp’s plans for Saturday’s game at Tottenham, or indeed the next six months, Ings firmly believes that he can make an impression on the new Liverpool boss in other ways. “As modern-day professionals it all comes down to how you perform on the pitch,” he says. “But you can’t perform on the pitch unless you are doing all the stuff off it in the correct manner, especially at this level.

“The only way I can get in his [Klopp’s] thoughts and show him what a good professional I am is the way I am in the gym or by being positive around the lads. Sometimes negativity can rub off on players and I don’t want to affect their performance. When you are injured you have to keep a positive mindset and keep moving forward.

“I feel better than I expected to feel and that might come from the fact I have had previous injuries that have been quite lengthy before or it might just be the fact I made my debut for England and I was playing all the recent games for Liverpool. I think it is important not to get too down. There will be a few down days when I am not feeling myself and I am gutted I cannot be out with the team. But I am trying to stay as positive as I can be.”

To sit and chat with Ings you would not know that this is a man who is facing up to six months out of the game: there is no knee brace and he poses for the pictures with the photographer without a grimace. In fact, when he got the diagnosis on Thursday, he and his friend, and agent, David Threlfall went for an hour’s walk around Calderstones Park in south Liverpool to discuss how he was going to approach his comeback.

The rupture itself is minute – a few millimetres – and in the past a small rupture like that would not have been operated on. The modern thinking is that surgery is necessary on all ruptures of the anterior cruciate in order that the ligament returns to full strength and the expectation is that Ings will have the operation in London on Tuesday.

“I was coming from the centre of the pitch to the left-hand side running full tilt,” Ings says. “I received the ball on the inside of my right foot and as I came inside pressing off my left it got caught in an awkward position. I went and sat down. We had tests on it and it was perfectly fine, the wobble test [used to detect cruciate ruptures] – everything was fine.

“We didn’t have a clue what it was because after that I got up and thought I could go and train again. We walked in because we didn’t want to risk it. We were doing tests again and there was nothing there. The only thing worrying me is that there was a click … I have had surgery on this knee before but it was an injury that was completely different – that was a repair of my meniscus.

“This is something completely different. The MRI showed it was an isolated ACL partial rupture. The only positive thing is that everything around it, the meniscus, all the other ligaments are fine so hopefully that will shorten the timescale when I return.”

And he is determined to come back fitter, stronger and better at a club where he has felt at home since he turned up early for the pre-season tour.

Ask Ings about Liverpool and he is still incredulous at the sheer number of staff and yet the friendliness of the place. He has a box of protein supplements under his arm from the club and a list of instructions as to when to take what. The first two weeks of rehab, he has been told, are crucial.

“I am experienced enough in my career to know it is not the end,” he says. “It is a setback and, yes, I was playing and I was starting for Liverpool sooner than I expected, which was great. Making my England debut was a massive achievement.

“These things do happen and it can be cruel but for me it is part of the game and this is when footballers really, really earn their money. To go in earlier than everyone else and come home later than everyone else. To work as hard as you can and come back better. I have always done that. Any injury I have had, I have come back stronger. Especially mentally strong and it makes me appreciate the job I do when things like this happen.”

We are discussing the injury and his expectations on Klopp when Ings points out that he would also like to say something about the man who brought him to Liverpool. Brendan Rodgers might have been pushed to the back of the agenda of late, but Ings has not forgotten him. “I couldn’t speak any more highly of him, he gave me the opportunity to play for Liverpool. Obviously he is going through a tough time at the moment. It is not nice for any manager but what I do know is that he is a great guy, and a great man to have around a club. I know he will do extremely well in his career.”

As for Ings’s immediate future, he is adamant that he will play again this season and he refuses to rule out being fit in time to contend for a place at the European Championship, although he will take the experts’ advice first. There have been many messages from former team-mates and coaches and one from Alan Shearer, who went through the same thing at a similar age.

“When he popped up on Twitter … well, he didn’t have to do that,” Ings says. “I’m extremely grateful and when you see he went through the same process it shows that you do come back from these things. With the physio and the technology it has moved on even more. Look at Theo Walcott [who suffered a cruciate rupture last year] and how sharp he is … it’s like he has never been away. I know I am going to come back, it is just how I do it.

“You can be as strong as you want to be. The stronger I come back mentally and physically, the more chance I have of being in the thoughts of the England manager. Those things are realistic.”

Source: Telegraph

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