![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/day-three-25.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWith the 2026\/27 campaign nearing, director of performance Phil Hayward has provided an update on the players who\u2019ve had their pre-seasons affected by injury.<\/p>\n
Rafiki Said and Jean-Ricner Bellegarde face spells out, but Sam Johnstone and Fer Lopez are nearing returns, after Adam Armstrong was back in action at the weekend.<\/p>\n
Rafiki Said<\/p>\n
New signing Said suffered an MCL injury during the opening stages of Wolves\u2019 pre-season friendly at Maidenhead United on 22nd July and will now miss the start of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, Rafiki had an injury whilst taking a shot during the Maidenhead game, fairly early on in the match, the shot was blocked, placing a big strain on the inside of his knee, and as a result he sustained a high-grade injury to his medial collateral ligament [MCL]. It’s very difficult for him at the minute, having just come to the club, and he hadn’t been training for very long, so it\u2019s really disappointing for both him and for us because he was looking sharp, but unfortunately, it\u2019s part and parcel of the game sometimes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of the process, he’ll be in a brace for the next six weeks or so and he’ll have some injections in that time to accelerate the healing process. He\u2019ll be somewhat limited in terms of what he can do functionally in that time, whilst the ligament heals. He\u2019ll be working hard in the gym to maintain his fitness and be doing lots of strength work to maintain all the muscles around the injured area, but he’s not going to be able to do anything particularly functional in that time. Once the brace comes off, he’ll then have to build back up and get back into training, which is likely to take another few weeks, so he\u2019s going to miss the first part of the season for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jean-Ricner Bellegarde<\/p>\n
Following a three-week break after the World Cup, Bellegarde returned to Compton Park last week, but now faces a period out with a hamstring injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the weekend during the training session JJ felt his hamstring. We’ve had an MRI scan and there’s a fairly high-grade injury to his left hamstring. He\u2019s out for a number of weeks, not the same time as Rafiki, but it\u2019s going to be a few weeks until he\u2019s back on the grass. He was away for the World Cup, had the break, and then came back in last week, so we’ve built him up pretty slowly, but just one particular action during the session caused him to feel his hamstring.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose players at the World Cup all had three weeks off afterwards, but within that block there was a week of conditioning to be doing on holiday, and he did that properly, so it’s frustrating. He had a hamstring injury on the opposite side last December, a really similar type of injury, and it’s unfortunate. Had it been an injury to the same area that’s been injured before then it would generally take a bit longer to come back from because damaging new scar tissue can take longer to heal, so that is a positive, but still not great news. It\u2019s difficult to manage the workload, these players had a long season and because of the World Cup didn’t really stop, we do everything we can to manage the risk but also have to be realistic that the season starts in two weeks, so it’s disappointing, but we\u2019ve got to deal with it and get him back as quickly as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Sam Johnstone<\/p>\n
Goalkeeper Johnstone is yet to feature during pre-season, having undergone shoulder surgery this summer, but has stepped up his recovery recently.<\/p>\n
\u201cSam has been doing rehab throughout the summer and has worked really hard; he only had two weeks off over the summer. He had the surgery towards the end of last season but has progressed really well over the off-season. He’s now pretty much back in full training, doing the majority of sessions, and has had no issues with his shoulder, so he’s progressing really well and is on schedule to be back in full training over the next couple of weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was something that he was managing for a couple months before surgery. We always try to manage things without surgery wherever possible, and manage things with rehabilitation and less invasive measures, but that didn’t solve the problem. The timing of the surgery meant he wasn’t available for the last few games last season, and then had the whole off-season to recuperate, so the six weeks of the off-season plus the three weeks before we went away were all part of that rehab. As a result, the amount of games and training that he’s missed has been minimised.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fer Lopez<\/p>\n
Midfielder Lopez missed the Maidenhead and Real Sociedad friendlies with a minor issue but is expected to return to action this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing major at all on Fer, more muscle tightness around the groin, so it\u2019s something that we managed for a few days, but we didn’t feel like he was ready to be involved in a match so soon. He trained on Saturday and Monday with no issue, so he’s been fine, no issues at all, so he\u2019s fully available for the matches this week.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/day-two-17.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Adam Armstrong<\/p>\n
Armstrong was back on the pitch against Real Sociedad on Saturday, having successfully overcome a minor issue early in pre-season.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had a small issue in Portugal to the soleus [calf] muscle. It settled down very quickly again. It was a pretty minor issue, not a huge amount of muscle damage, so he missed a few days\u2019 training and then gradually built back up. He was back involved in the matchday squad on Saturday and should be fully available going forward. He’s been absolutely fine since the injury and looks really sharp.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the 2026\/27 campaign nearing, director of performance Phil Hayward has provided an update on the players who\u2019ve…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-715677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}