Glenn Roeder is crossing his fingers that Darel Russell will emerge from his weekend's work unscathed after revealing that the City midfielder underwent surgery on a double hernia just 10 days ago.

Glenn Roeder is crossing his fingers that Darel Russell will emerge from his weekend's work unscathed after revealing that the City midfielder underwent surgery on a double hernia just 10 days ago.

Russell put in almost a full shift at Home Park - dropping back to midfield to replace the injured Sammy Clingan ­ - despite still suffering the after-effects of surgery in Germany.

Now Roeder has to hope that he will be fit enough to face QPR at Carrow Road on Wednesday - three days before Sheffied United come to town.

"I played him longer than I thought," said Roeder, who was desperate to protect City's lead in the final stages at Plymouth.

"I was going to play him for 60 minutes today, but we needed to keep his psychical presence on the pitch because we knew with Plymouth chasing the game they would be lobbing the ball in at every opportunity from all different angles.

"From set plays it is not going to come in slow it is going to come in quick, plenty of pace on it and we needed his physical presence, so for him to last as long as he did I think he deserves a real pat on the back.

"I just hope we have not over-cooked him for Wednesday."

City had kept a lid on Russell's absence for almost a fortnight, and managed to deflect inquiries in the middle of last week.

"How we kept that secret I do not know," admitted the Canaries' manager.

"In the end one or two had an idea, but for the good of the club we didn't want Plymouth to know that."

Russell was operated on by the same surgeon who once treated Newcastle's Alan Shearer.

"She devised a technique that has made her considered the best surgeon of hernias in the world," said Roeder.

"Alan Shearer had a similar operation a few years ago at Newcastle and he played in 10 days.

"He (Russell) has been very focused on getting himself back for today and he was still touch and go yesterday and this morning.

"He is obviously still in pain. He was in a lot of pain while he was playing as a striker, but the pain was because of the tears he had on either side that created the hernias.

"Now he is in pain because of the operation.

"The way the lady does it, I think she puts mesh in and stitches it very finely - so there is going to be pain there, but it's a pain where he can't do any more damage," Roeder added.