Elvedi and Jantschke back in team training

Nico Elvedi and Tony Jantschke made their return to team training on Wednesday afternoon as preparations began for the home game against RB Leipzig on Saturday (18:30 CEST).

Daniel Farke’s team trained for almost two hours on Wednesday as they started preparing for Saturday’s visit of RB Leipzig. The players completed some passing drills and then had a small tournament on a small-sided pitch to finish the session off. Nico Elvedi and Tony Jantschke were able to train with the team again. Elvedi had recently been out with an ankle injury and then the flu, whilst his fellow defender missed the trip to Freiburg with an ankle knock. “Tony is not yet completely pain-free, but was able to train with it taped up. It looked good, though we’ll have to wait and see how his body reacts,” reported Farke. “Nico’s ankle is fully healed now. He could only do some light running on Monday after his flu, but was fully involved today and seemed to be okay. I’m hopeful that he will be available this weekend.”

Definite absentees will be Alassane Plea (muscle strain), Florian Neuhaus (partial rupture of his PCL) and Ko Itakura (partial rupture of his MCL). “It’s very disappointing to lose these guys. Ko and Flo are two important players for us and have played a lot so far this season. Losing two players of this quality is obviously a bad thing. We will have to find ways of coping without them now,” said the head coach, who will probably also be missing Tobias Sippel. “He has suffered a shoulder injury and couldn’t train today. We’ll have to wait and see how bad it is.”