Osei-tutu set to return for Reds
NOTTINGHAM Forest head coach Steve Cooper will be handed a timely boost next week, with full-back Jordi Osei-tutu set to return.
The 23-year-old has been sidelined since August, after suffering a recurrence of the hamstring issue which limited him to only a handful of appearances on loan with Cardiff City last term.
He returned to parent club Arsenal to undergo rehabilitation but is now set to link up with the Reds on Monday.
And it comes as Forest are short of options at full-back, with the news Max Lowe faces up to two months out of action with a groin strain.
“Osei-tutu is back with us on Monday. He will commence his training with us,” Cooper told the Nottingham Post.
“I’m looking forward to meeting him properly and, hopefully, getting the right programme for him to feature soon.
“He’s done his rehab, so he’ll be training with us.
“We’ll have to be careful. There will be some sort of transition period, in terms of communication with Arsenal - and rightly so, we want that as well, to make sure it’s right for the player.
“But he will be back in training.” Osei-tutu, who can play on either the right or left side of the defence, has made only two appearances in the Garibaldi since putting pen to paper on a season-long move.
Both of those games came back in August, when Chris Hughton was still in charge.
His return will offer a potential solution for Lowe’s absence, with Gaetan Bong the only other orthodox senior left-back on the books.
Unlike Osei-tutu, though, Sheffield United loanee Lowe will stay at the City Ground to work his way back to fitness.
“He’ll stay with us,” said Cooper, ahead of his team’s trip to West Bromwich Albion tonight. “He’s still very much part of the group. We treat loan players like our own anyway once they are with us. Sometimes you are governed by the parent club, we understand that.”
He added: “You don’t want to see any player get injured. If they do, you hope they are only short ones and they can return quickly.
“Unfortunately for Max, it’s a little bit longer than what we had hoped.
“It was a muscle injury, so it was always going to be a week or two weeks. Unfortunately, they can be worse than that, and this one is a little bit.
“It’s not a long-term injury but it’s certainly going to rule him out for a minimum of six or seven weeks. “It’s a bit of a blow for everybody. “There’s never a good time to get injured, but this certainly was bad timing because he was playing regular football, playing at a very high level and had completely bought into what we are trying to do here, in terms of how we want to play.
“For me, he was performing at an excellent level. For that to be halted for something pretty innocuous is frustrating.
“He’s a really professional guy, is Max. He does things right.
“Sometimes with muscle injuries they can be prevented, but sometimes they can’t - and I think that was the case here.”