Jon Whitney confirms 'devastating' Joe Edwards blow
Walsall vice-captain Joe Edwards faces a lengthy spell on the side lines after injuring his anterior cruciate knee ligament.
The midfielder, who has been one of the Saddlers best performers in the 2017/18 campaign, picked up the injury in Saturday’s loss to Blackburn.
Boss Jon Whitney revealed the news at a snow-swept Peterborough tonight after watching his team slip to an unfortunate 2-1 loss at London Road.
It means Edwards might have played his last game for club with the 27-year-old out of contract in the summer.
“Joe has got a long term knee injury, the boss said.”
“We have had some devastating news. It was very innocuous but it will be long term.
“He is seeing a specialist on Friday. We will know more after but that but he is definitely out for the season and probably the start of next season as well.
“All our thoughts are with Joe because it’s a devastating blow for him especially and also for us as a group.
“The kid is feeling it at the moment. I feel for Joe. We’re thinking it’s an ACL rupture but we just want it to settle down before we a specialist on Friday.”
Meanwhile, Whitney bemoaned his side’s defending after his team fell to defeat against Peterborough tonight.
The Saddlers took a first half-lead though Julien Ngoy but individual errors from Nicky Devlin and Erhun Oztumer gifted Posh two goals.
“I thought the defensive errors cost us dear,” the boss continued.
“On a pitch like that you have use your nous a bit. We created enough chances to get something from the game – especially first-half.
“But we can’t gift opposing teams goals in the manner we did. We aren’t fooling anybody. If you want to keep cleans sheets you can’t make individual errors like that.
“I was really disappointed with the goals. I can’t fault the lads effort. But if you give those goals away you have got a mountain to climb.”
The game ended with almost two inches of snow on the pitch with referee Lee Swabey suspending it late into the second half to allow ground staff and some of the Posh players to clear it with shovels.
But Whitney felt it would have been wrong to call the match off.
“We didn’t want the game to be called off - it would have felt very unjust if we were 2-1 up and that happened,” he added.
