Allardyce said: “Michael picks up a niggle and the world seems to stop for a couple of days.
“Forget the groin, the hernia or whatever people are talking about.
“The fact is Michael hasn’t had an extended run of games for a long period of time, so there has to be some doubt in your mind about whether he’s going to be able to do that.
“If he’d stayed on the other night and the problem had extended to tearing the abductor muscle we wouldn’t be having this debate. He’d just be out and injured.
“I was saying what’s all this fuss when I first came here. But it’s because of the size of player.
“He is bigger than anyone else. He deals with that and I’m doing the same.”
