Former Chelsea and Everton winger Pat Nevin joined Off The Ball on Monday evening and had some advice for recently injured James McCarthy.
The Irish international broke his leg over the weekend following a collision with West Brom's Salomon Rondon, and is expected to face a long road to recovery.
Nevin himself went through a bad injury during his playing days, damaging his cruciate ligament, and he believes the only way to mentally recover from injuries like that is to put yourself in a similar position once the player returns.
"My worst injury when playing was cruciate damage. It was getting back, getting your head to allow you to get in that position again. I remember the first time it happened after I came back, and I went to turn in exactly the same angle and there was somebody in the same position and I involuntarily jumped. The ball just rolled away and I thought, 'oh my god, is the rest of my career going to be like that?', but then it goes away".
"My memory of it was I didn't make the decision, my head made the decision for me. I had jumped out of the way at that moment without even thinking about it because your head has reminded you of it. But it goes away as you continue to do it and you take a few hits. The best thing you can do is when you've had one of those injuries is get a very similar sort of situation and you deal with it. After that, for me it was wiped, it was gone and you were away with it".
The former Scottish international also said when speaking of returning from injuries like McCarthy's, that "the most dangerous thing, and again it's an old cliche, but the most dangerous thing you can do is be half-hearted or jump out of things. That is absolutely when you get injured, you need to be committed".
"More often than not it's usually the ones you don't see because you're usually in control. You can move you foot quick enough, you can take all sorts of hits as long as your foot's slightly off the ground or can move, but if you're absolutely planted on the ground you're stuffed".
The 54-year-old was also quick to criticise the injury being broadcast on television, as he believes it does no good to anyone to see the result of the collision.
"It's a horrifying thing. I don't see any benefit whatsoever of showing that, at all, to anyone. Maybe medical practitioners might want to look at that afterwards to have an idea of what happened and that sort of thing. Other than that I don't think it does anyone any benefit at all. And apart from anything else, his family could be watching. Do they really want to see that?"
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