GOMES ON HIS INJURY HELL … AND MIRACLE RECOVERY

ANDRE GOMES could not look at his disfigured ankle but the horrified faces in the crowd told him just how bad it was.

Even then, and despite immense pain, the Everton midfielder refused oxygen as the club doctor John Hollingsworth put the joint back into place.

It was November 3 and the Portuguese had just suffered a dislocation fracture after a lunge from Tottenham’s Son Heung-Min led him to crash into Serge Aurier.

Gomes was in agony but did not want pain relief as the club doctor’s quick-thinking helped speed the miraculous recovery that means he will feature against Manchester United tomorrow.

“It was really important, actually,” said Gomes, right. “He was unbelievable. I knew he wanted to do that and I rejected the oxygen because with the adrenaline I was mad,

I was angry. I was feeling everything. He put it in place two times, rotating it and then putting it in place. Luis Boa Morte was next to me and I think I punched him at that moment.” While Gomes was writhing on the pitch, his brother was in the crowd along with his daughter who had come to Goodison Park to watch her uncle play for the first time. “People told me my brother wanted to run to the pitch and the stewards were saying, ‘No, no, don’t do that’,” said Gomes. “So it was really hard for everybody.” What the 26-year-old did see was the crowd’s reaction to his injury. “While I’m screaming and I’m realising that this really happened, I can see the crowd looking at me and going like this,” he said, holding hands to his face. “I looked at the corner of the main stand and fans were taking their kids out of the way. When it happened, I couldn’t look at my foot. I was trying to avoid it. I didn’t want that picture in my memory. The only picture I have is I’m screaming, I’m really upset, and I lift my knee in front of me so I can’t see my foot. I knew something was pointing in the wrong direction.”

While Gomes has never watched footage of the incident, he did relive the moment in his mind as he lay in hospital.

“In the days after I had some flashbacks of things, even like slipping,” he said. “It was crazy because when that happened to me I was having reactions with my foot – the injured one was moving!”

Gomes does not blame Son, whose red card for the challenge was later rescinded. And after 12-hour rehabilitation sessions he started training again last month. Despite early predictions he would not play again this term, he returned as a substitute in the 3-2 defeat by Arsenal last week.

“The past was a scary moment,” said Gomes. “But it feels good to be back.”

OLE GUNNAR SOLSKJAER is determined to make amends when he returns to the scene of his “lowest point” as Manchester United manager tomorrow.

Solskjaer, below, apologised to fans after a 4-0 drubbing at Everton last April. He said: “That was a total capitulation. Everything you didn’t want to see you saw that day. I am 100 per cent sure we’ll put in a better performance.”