Could you post the article somewhere? Unable to see it
ARTICLE TEXT Part 1.
**Phil Jones reveals the true story behind months of injury torment made worse by abuse in the street and criticism even from Rio Ferdinand**
_Jonathan Norcroft, Football Correspondent
Sunday September 19 2021, 12.01am, The Sunday Times_
Alaria is a clever girl and old enough to understand, Phil Jones says, and he gets a sick feeling just thinking about that day in Hale. He was strolling with his three-year-old daughter, pushing her little sister, Rayah, in the pram. A workman walked past. And the guy suddenly just unloaded. “_Hey, Phil . . . You’re ****. You’re shit_!”
Alaria turned to look at him. “_You know when a little kid will ask you 20 times before you give them the answer_?” Jones says. “_It was one of them. ‘What is that? Daddy, Daddy, what is that_?’
“_I got so many emotions: rage, calm down, do I confront him, what do I say to my wife? I froze. In the end another guy walking past said, ‘Phil, leave it. Hey, you’re better than that_.’ ”
He did leave it. He was brought up to leave it, reared at Manchester United to leave it. His values are that you get your head down, you do your work, you don’t start thinking you’re special, don’t complain.
So, he has been leaving it all this time. Leaving it through years of abuse on social media (in 2017 he came off every platform, deleting the apps from his phone). Leaving it when talked down by pundits or mocked for his injuries. Leaving it when barracked in the street — Hale was by no means the only time.
Now he is here, over a coffee in south Manchester, opening up, because enough is enough.
The tipping point: Rio Ferdinand, in a podcast, calling him a “_waste of time_”, who is “_taking up a youth player’s position_”. Ferdinand painted him as one of those comfort-zone leeches, who just sits there taking the money. This cannot go unchallenged — Jones wants to tell the real story of what has been happening since his most recent appearance for United, in January 2020.
“_Listen, the respect I’ve got is enormous. I’ve shared a dressing room with Rio — great professional. Loved playing with him. Great lad, good humour. Learnt so much off him_,” Jones begins. “_But what he said was poor. Really poor. I’m not into disputes, not into arguments, and if he didn’t know, he didn’t know_. . .”
The truth is that Jones, 29, has been fighting the same debilitating injury that put Ole Gunnar Solskjaer out for three years as a player. It is severe meniscal damage, and his is to the lateral meniscus of his right knee. The issue first arose when he was an academy player with Blackburn Rovers and flared up at the start of his second season with United. He was 20, had just been to Euro 2012 with England and was being fêted, with Sir Bobby Charlton comparing him to Duncan Edwards.
He had surgery. Upon coming round, the surgeon bleakly explained that he had removed the meniscus — it was just not reparable. That left Jones with bone crunching against bone inside the joint. Linear movement was always OK but sideways impact often caused pain. Still, things were manageable until 2016, and the start of José Mourinho’s first campaign as United manager. “_I’d get swelling after training. You’d lay a ball off and any resistance against the knee was just agony. The merest nudge_,” Jones says.
“_For years I’d go into games thinking, ‘I shouldn’t really be playing,’ and players would look at me, see the swelling and be thinking, ‘He’s playing here?’ But I love playing and I’ll do anything for United. If I have to play at 60 per cent and know I can get through it, then why not_?”
The Covid-19 shutdown offered a chance to rest and rebuild physically, and he worked like a demon, waking early for extra running and gym work before the kids got up. When United resumed training, in May 2020, he was, “_in the best shape I’d ever felt as a professional footballer_”.
On day two, the squad did a familiar sprint exercise, “strides”. He completed one set “_and then just couldn’t run, couldn’t pick my leg up to bend it. I just walked in_.
“_Everyone was saying, ‘What’s he doing?’ I’d lost my mind completely. I’m thinking, ‘I’m finished, can’t be bothered with all this any more.’ I went straight to the doc and said, ‘Enough’s enough. I’ve had too many anti-inflammatories, too many injections, too many close shaves. I need this sorted_.’”
He travelled to Barcelona to visit the world-leading specialist Dr Ramon Cugat. Cugat prescribed injections — and, if unsuccessful, last-resort microfracture surgery. The injections did not work, and so in late August he had the operation. It involves drilling deep holes into the knee to allow an influx of blood, rich in growth factors, which eventually turns into fibrous cartilage.
Rehab included a week in Spain, two months on crutches and time strapped to a machine at home. Covid complicated everything. Travel restrictions delayed his visits to Cugat, adding months to the process, and the hardest bits of rehab coincided with the UK’s second and third lockdowns.
It seemed a long shot that the surgery would actually work. Rayah was a baby, Alaria a toddler, the Joneses were living in a new house and Kaya, his wife, had to do everything, “_while I was just hobbling about, not even able to take the kids to the park_”.
“_It was the lowest I’ve ever been as a human being. I used to come back [from United’s training ground] and be in bits. My head was an absolute mess. I’d be in tears. I’d say to Kaya, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ I remember us both crying_.”
He and Kaya met at school in Leyland. “_She has kept the ship together while I got my **** together_,” he reflects. “_I feel guilty because she didn’t deserve having to deal with me every day and then look after the kids_.
“_There were many times I felt an awful dad. You’re trying to give your kids your energy but you can’t. Listen, you’ve got daughters . . . if your daughter tells you you’re dressing up as a princess, you’re dressing up as a princess . . . but I just wasn’t there, wasn’t present in the moment. I’d be on my phone or miles away_.
“_I’m not scared of saying any of this. People and footballers, they’ll put on a front that everything’s all right, but you don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors_.”
At his lowest came the abuse in the street in Hale and he would just like people to reflect on some of the vitriol footballers get. “_In this society we’re living in at the minute, all the racism and stuff that affects mental health — I’d just say be careful. You don’t know how it’s going to affect players: physically, mentally, emotionally. We always go back to the same point: ‘Oh they’re footballers, they should be able to deal with it, they get so much money, have this lavish lifestyle.’ But take all that away, strip all that back and we’re just human beings_.
“_Listen, my problems are not bigger than the problems someone has to deal with in an office, I know that. But they are problems. Footballers have problems like anybody else, and maybe me talking can help players_.”
In the early months of his layoff the training ground was a difficult place. He felt guilty about being out of action again and “_so useless, so worthless_”. He would ask the physios to arrange later sessions so he did not have to face team-mates asking how he was doing. “_All I could say to them was [puts on a small voice] ‘I’m getting there’. When at the back of my mind I’d be thinking, ‘I’m miles off_.’ ”
Yet now he really is getting there. After 14 months of graft he was ready to join the start of United’s pre-season training in July. Typical of his luck, he then contracted Covid, delaying his return until the squad went to Scotland for a camp. On August 2 he completed his first full session since before the 2020 lockdown. Team-mates applauded him on to the field.
Another win and 3 points for the PE teacher with vibes 
the amazing away record continues 
what a week for Lingard lol. Dave with a peno save to boot 
your not going to have it all your own way Liverpool this season 