Ola Aina’s fitness status revealed after Super Eagles star featured in Nottingham Forest’s U-21 clash

Nottingham Forest head coach Sean Dyche has revealed the fitness status of Super Eagles defender Ola Aina as he continues his recovery from a hamstring injury, Soccernet.ng reports.

The 29-year-old limped and had to be taken off inside ten minutes at the Free State Toyota Stadium in Bloemfontein as the Super Eagles played a 1-1 draw against South Africa, as Nigeria's World Cup hopes hit the rocks.

The ex-Chelsea man then had to undergo surgery and was ruled out for three months. Although he returned to training with Forest, Aina was omitted from Eric Chelle's final 28-man AFCON squad list.

Four days after the full squad was announced, Aina resumed action for Nottingham Forest's U-21s in their 2-1 win over Millwall U-21s, playing 53 minutes.

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Ola Aina is nearing full fitness for Nottingham Forest

Ahead of the Reds' clash against Fulham on Monday, Sean Dyche revealed the injury status of some of the players in his squad.

“It’s looking better,” Dyche said of the injury situation in quotes revealed by Nottingham Post.

“Woody is still recovering on the grass at the moment. He is not with us yet but is recovering.

“Ola [Aina] is halfway through his progress in fitness. He is training more regularly with the team now, which is good, but it has been a long-term injury, so we have had to be careful with that one.

“He is still a bit of a way off with his true fitness. He has been out for a long time, and it takes even longer to reach that deep level of fitness, but he is making good progress forward.

“Pretty much everyone else is back on the grass. They still have to get total match fitness. We can only play so many games and B Team games, but they are getting there.

“There is certainly a good training group now and a lot of demand in that training group, which is good,” the former Burnley coach concluded.

While he's making progress in training, Aina will not be able to play for Nottingham Forest until next year.