Koeman concerned about McCarthy injury

Everton manager Ronald Koeman has said that he is “a little bit worried” about the nature of midfielder James McCarthy’s injuries, and their recurrence. The Republic of Ireland midfielder went down during the Merseyside Derby on Monday night with a hamstring ailment, and missed the second half of the game.

He has previously been injured and undergone surgery already this season, and it resulted in a war of words between Koeman and Martin O’Neill, who is the manager of the Ireland team. O’Neilly played McCarthy for almost two full games during an international break when the player was still in recovery mode and invoked Koeman’s ire.

During the pre-match press conference yesterday ahead of Everton’s Boxing Day trip to Leicester City, Koeman said that McCarthy had suffered a “slight hamstring strain” and would be out for two to three weeks.

“Of course that’s bad news because the boy was doing well.

“I am a little bit worried about a lot of these kind of injuries.

“He was overloaded when he came back from Ireland but I was really confident that James was on a good level of fitness and he showed that against Arsenal.

“There was no reason not to start him against Liverpool, so of course I’m worried about his fitness and his several muscle problems. But we need to wait.

“We need to do everything for him to get more consistency in his game time. That’s the most important thing.

“He needs to improve the intensity of his training for the whole week and that’s the next step for him.”