Jones plays game of risk over injured Adebayo for ‘winner takes all’ Huddersfield play-off

Nathan Jones played is safe over top scorer Elijah Adebayo by leaving him out the Championship play-off semi-final first leg draw with Huddersfield – but could be prepared to roll the dice on his fitness for tonight’s do or die return fixture.

The Hatters hitman missed the last two games of the regular season after injuring his hamstring in the final seconds against Blackpool when a winner he helped set up was controversially ruled out. 

Adebayo gave fans some hope of a return for Friday’s play-off showdown, when he said he was “quietly confident” of a return after undergoing cryotherapy to help speed his recovery. 

But the striker was not named in the squad as skipper Sonny Bradley scored the equaliser to take a 1-1 draw to the John Smith’s Stadium.

The winners of tonight’s second leg will go to Wembley for the so-called most lucrative game in football against either Sheffield United or Nottingham Forest. 

Asked if 17-goal Adebayo will be available for tonight’s clash, Jones said: “We’ll see. Today (Friday) was too big a risk, because if he does play and something happens, then we don’t get him for Monday and anything further, but it’s a straight shoot-out, it’s winner takes all, so the risk might be worth it on Monday.

“He’s been in cryotherapy, been in oxygen chambers, done everything possible we could to try and get him to play, he’s a big talent, he’s a big player, so we’ve got to make sure it’s safe to do so.

“It’s (cryotherapy) slowing it and down and recovering, getting rid of lactic acid, it’s all the things that cold does, it’s one of the best natural healers.”

Speaking before Friday’s game about what Town have been doing to help ease their injury issues, Jones had said: “I think when you have unlimited resources you have unlimited money or whatever it is, or unlimited knowledge of the best things, there’s so much you can do.

“What our club does, is we try and get every little per cent that we possibly can, we invest more in infrastructure than we do on just going out and splashing on players wages, so we have as professional an environment as there is.

“A cryotherapy chamber, we use that, that will travel with us, so every little inch we possibly can get we will, but that’s how the football club has been run for a long time.

“I can only say, since I’ve come into the football club, the board and the CEO, Gary (Sweet), have backed us on everything we’ve needed, all those little things, two nights away, so on, every bit of preparation we’ve tried to do.”

The Hatters saw midfielder Henri Lansbury limp out of the first leg, and Town had to battle bravely to deny Huddersfield an advantage, though Jones dismissed the notion that a second half dominated by the Terriers was as a result of his threadbare squad tiring. 

“I wouldn’t say ‘looking jaded’,” he said, adding: “Their shape caused us a little bit of a problem, we arrested that late on and then evened it up and finished strongly, so it wasn’t a problem.

“But what the injury list does mean is we’ve got very little to really go at them and freshen up, if I’ve got Gabe Osho, Pelly-Ruddock (Mpanzu), Luke Berry, Elijah Adebayo, Fred Onyedinma, Admiral Muskwe, available for Monday, then wow, we can go fresh, aggressive, front footed. We can’t do that.

“They changed their shape a little bit by putting an extra midfielder in there and playing with one up front.

“They didn’t penetrate or get behind us or get any chances, the keeper didn’t have a save to make, what they did was they played in front of us and frustrated us, they didn’t allow us to have more of the game then we wanted, and that was a real good tactical switch, we then changed, matched them up in midfield and got a little bit more penetration, which maybe we should have done it earlier.

“It’s what they do, they do it well, they sit in, counter, deny space and they counter centrally.

“We made a couple of bad errors in the build up to that, which we could have defended it better, and then they finished well, it’s what they do, they’ve done it all season and that’s why they finished third in the league from doing it, but we’ve had some glorious opportunities.

“Henri Lansbury’s had a glorious opportunity, Cameron Jerome a stonewall penalty, red card (for Naby Sarr), James Bree, the keepers had to make an early save, and we scored a wonderful goal from a set-play, so there’s so many positives to come from it.

“These are tight games. I’ve been here in this position where we’ve been two down from the first game, gone to Nottingham Forest with Yeovil Town, right, £1.4million budget, gone to ex-European champions and won 5-2, so don’t be negative.

“We were possibly one of the best teams ever to play a diamond. We went to it second half, we probably did it a little it too late as we’ve been very good back in our shape in terms of how we go about stuff, but we couldn’t get pressure on the ball.

“Now, they didn’t have any chances from it, but it meant they slowed our momentum down which was excellent tactically from them, but we’ve got to make sure we’re tactically really astute on Monday because it’s going to be a massive game, a great game.”