Nottingham Forest striker Taiwo Awoniyi has been woken from his coma as he continues to recover from emergency surgery.
Awoniyi is understood to have suffered a ruptured intestine during a collision with the post late on in Forest’s 2-2 draw with Leicester City, even attempting to play on after Nuno Espirito Santo used his final substitute.
He was placed in an induced coma to aid his recovery, but the Daily Mail were the first to reveal that Awoniyi has since been woken up following the second part of his surgery on Wednesday evening.
The incident has placed further scrutiny on officials to address the current offside protocol. Assistants are urged not to flag for offsides until the play comes to an end in order to allow VAR to review the action, but many had predicted this could lead to an avoidable injury.
In Awoniyi’s case, Anthony Elanga had clearly run offside in the build-up but, following the guidelines, play was not stopped and the competitive nature of proceedings ultimately led to Awoniyi’s collision with the post.
“Anthony was miles offside,” Forest right-back Ola Aina said. “The whole world could see and so could I from where I was. You think ‘offside’ straight away. Surely you could just lift the flag up?
“Personally I liked how it was back in the day when for offside they just put it up straight away. A simple decision and get on with the game.
“Having to see it out and then just see this happen… well none of this would have happened to T if the flag had just gone up would it?”
Aina continued: “This is our teammate and brother and someone we spend most of the year with. It affects everybody in some sort of way. All we can do is show our support and hopefully everything goes well for him now.
“It’s horrible seeing someone you are close with go through something like this but I pray to God everything goes to plan and goes well and that we will be hearing from him soon. I have sent him messages. We all have.”
