By Gareth James

Aaron Ramsey turned up for training at Cardiff City for the first time in four months this week as he pushes to get back into action after a lengthy hamstring injury.

The Wales skipper has been plagued by injury since returning to his home town club in the summer of 2023 and has only managed four appearances this season.

️ Omer: “It’s brilliant for @aaronramsey. It’s nice to see him back on the pitch training.

“Today was his first day back with the group. He’s got to complete full training and he’ll be down to play some U21 minutes. Hopefully after that we can reintroduce him.”#CityAsOne pic.twitter.com/4Mg1GgHyX3

— Cardiff City FC (@CardiffCityFC) January 23, 2025

But manager Omer Riza was delighted to see him back on the grass with the rest of his squad in the build up to this weekend’s vital clash with Derby County.

“It’s brilliant for Aaron to be back training with us. He’s had a few upsets in terms of his injury, but he’s back training a little bit earlier than we thought,” said Riza, whose side are now unbeaten in seven games.

“Today was his first day back with the group. He’s done odd technical thing with us and then gone off to do his own thing, but now we can start to build him back up.

“It’s nice for the players and the staff to have him back and everyone knows what he has done over the course of his career and how much the club means to him.

“He’ll start to train more and more to get him back to playing. We’ll put him down to play with the U21 team to begin with and after that he’ll be up for selection for the first team again.

“When that will be I don’t know yet. It’s important we don’t rush him because he’s had issues in the past and we don’t want anything to happen to him again.”

“It’s nice to see him back out there.”

Omer Riza says Wales captain Aaron Ramsey has returned to Cardiff training earlier than he thought. ✅#BBCFootball #CCFC pic.twitter.com/SOMIXD2cB9

— BBC Sport Wales (@BBCSportWales) January 23, 2025

Ramsey posted pictures of himself back in training to his 4.5 million Instagram followers and the smile on his face will no doubt have been a boost to Wales manager Craig Bellamy.

His captain was injured in the 2-1 Nations League win in Montenegro on 9 September and that forced him to sit out the last four internationals.

Next up for Bellamy and his side are two World Cup qualifying games against Kazakhstan in Cardiff on 22 March and a trip to North Macedonia three days later.

Riza has said in the past he hoped to have Ramsey back in action by March.

His return to training this week could see him be fit and firing for both club and country by then.