Queens Park Rangers' Luke Amos has opened up on his previous battles with injury.
The 23-year-old is on-loan at QPR this season from London rivals Tottenham Hotspur. He's had a decent season making 25 appearances in the Championship, but many don't know the journey he's been on over the past few years.
He's been with the Spurs academy since 2006 and was on the cusp of becoming a regular feature under Mauricio Pochettino, after making his Premier League debut last season.
The last campaign looked set to Amos' breakthrough but in late September, playing in a development squad match after missing out on the first-team, injury struck:
“It was one freak moment," Amos told www.qpr.co.uk. "I went to press – I must have done that a million times in my life – but this one time I went to turn then everything in my knee just crunched and clicked.”
“I limped to the changing room by myself and when I got in there I just started crying. My knee swelled up straight away, the pain was unbearable and the doctors gave me loads of pain killers but it wouldn’t stop it.”
The injury tarnished his season, but he found refuge at Mark Warburton's QPR last summer. His pre-season started impressively and he was tipped to have a big season for his new club, but after a few games of the season, he was ruled out for a few more weeks.
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"I can remember every day of my recovery but, at the same time, it is like a blur," he continued. "I tried to maximise every single second that I had a and I found energy that I didn’t know I had.
“I’d been on top of the world, was training with the first team and was one pick away from starting in the Premier League and I wanted to get back into that position as quickly as possible.
“There were days that were overwhelming, where I’d be in the gym and would have to go and hide in the altitude chamber to let some tears out and then get back into the gym.”
Although this campaign might not have lived up to all the hype around Amos, it's still been his best experience to date, and he's definitely shown glimpses of the player that Spurs regard him to be.
"Emotionally, that was just as hard as physically," admitted the QPR man. "I had a lot of people around me who felt my pain and that helped me a lot.
"Sometimes I’d be asking for more and the physios would say ‘no, go home’ so I’d sneak into the academy gym where they couldn’t see me and would do some extra work on my upper body. I know I couldn’t have worked any harder.”
The verdict
Many footballers go through experiences like this and so often the fans either don't know, or forget just how bad their injuries were. Amos has worked hard to become a useful player to Warburton, and many QPR fans would likely take him on-loan again next season.