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Tony Hibbert, who ruptured his medial ligaments in the game against Arsenal last season, is hoping he can avoid surgery and happy that he is still able to run and keep his fitness levels up in the lead up to pre-season.

“We didn’t realise at first how bad it was and then the specialist said it was bad – but it’s just one of those things," he said.

"I ruptured my medial ligaments, so they’ve basically come completely off the bone at the top where the nerve endings are and so that’s why I wasn’t feeling much pain.

“At the moment I’m doing running, obviously not to the extent of what the other lads will be doing, but I’ll probably be able to join in with them.

"It’s more or less just straight line speeds at the moment and keeping steady to get my fitness up.

“I’m hoping for the specialist to say that I won’t need an operation, and I really want to just kick on from where I am now.

"It’s not like we’ve held back but we need to know the full extent of the injury before I can start training properly.

“When I did it it felt okay. It didn’t seem bad until the result of the scan, which made it ten times worse when I actually saw what I had done. I even said to them that it wasn’t that bad. I’ve had tweaks in my knees before and it didn’t feel anywhere near as bad as them." ...discuss this in our forum...