DeAndre Yedlin made his full return from injury on Sunday in Newcastle United’s win against Manchester United but the USA right-back has admitted that he had been suffering from pain for a long time.
Yedlin, 26, completed 90 minutes in the Magpies’ 1-0 win at the weekend and he has since said that it was the first pain-free matchday for around 18 months, admitted that something had not been right with him for two years.
“I was actually thinking about it when I was warming up during the game,” Yedlin said, as quoted by SBI Soccer.
“It was always in warmups that it would be the worst and just to not have any pain during the warmups. It’s little things like that than can affect you during a game, if you’re uncertain about something. Just to feel 100 per cent for that was very reassuring, and it felt good.
“I’d been feeling that pain that I’d had for about 18 months before the surgery.
“Up until literally the weekend, probably about two years that there’s something’s not right.”
Yedlin underwent hernia surgery in May and made his first appearance of the season when he came off the bench at Leicester City before starting the win against Man United.
OPINION
It seems as though Yedlin really needed to undergo that surgery a lot sooner than he did and if his performances start to improve over the coming weeks and months then there’s a good chance it was the hernia issue that was impacting some of his displays. Newcastle have three right-backs to choose from in Yedlin, Javier Manquillo and summer signing Emil Krafth, so it is important that the USA international keeps his form up to avoid being dropped. Steve Bruce has already shown in the last two matches that he is willing to chop and change his starting line-up if he has to and while Yedlin’s spot is safe for now after the win against Man United, one bad game could see Krafth or Manquillo come in to replace him. It’s a good thing to have that sort of competition but if Yedlin does play consistently well, it will be interesting to see whether one of the other two right-backs become agitated over their lack of game-time.
