Akins says his thoughts are with Everton’s Bryan Oviedo

Bryan Oviedo of Everton suffers a double leg break. Photo: Harry Hubbard (Image: Archant)

Lucas Akins says his thoughts go out to Bryan Oviedo after the Everton player was taken to hospital with a suspected double fracture of his leg today.

Oviedo went into a tackle with Stevenage’s Simon Heslop with about 16 minutes on the clock, but he went down straight away and was stretchered off the pitch before play resumed with a Boro free-kick.

Speaking after the game about the Costa Rican full-back, Akins said: “It wasn’t very nice. My commiserations go out to the lad.

“Basically Hes has gone to shoot and [Oviedo] has gone to block the ball and Hes has just kicked him.

“[The injury] was horrendous and is the worst thing that I’ve seen in my career.

“I know he was probably likely to be involved in the World Cup with Costa Rica but hopefully it hasn’t traumatised him or the boys too much.”

Akins had a great chance to put his side ahead early in today’s game, but after Joel Robles was unable to hold on to a shot the Stevenage forward fired goalwards only for John Stones to get a block in.

To make matters worse for Akins and Boro, Everton scored the opener not long afterwards before adding three further goals to win 4-0.

“It was disappointing on all accounts. We wanted to put in a better account of ourselves and we were disappointed with everything,” Akins said.

“The keeper’s dropped it and I think it’s come out to me and I should have scored so I’m disappointed from that point of view.

“Football, the beautiful game that it is, they then go up the other end and score to compound the error. It’s always going to be a difficult task but we believed that we could win this game.”