He told nufcTV: "I wouldn't be out here if I wasn't 100% but, like anything, you can't have the illness that I've had and then just go and train and then after two minutes go and play straight away.

"You need to almost harden your body. Like last season when the manager took over, I played almost 20 games under his reign and there wasn't even an ounce of a problem because your body gets hardened to playing.

"When I've struggled it's when I've been stop-start. The first 10 training sessions and the first two or three games after I've got injured are very important to me and, as long as I can get through the next couple of weeks, the next couple of games, then I'm off and away."