Archive for July, 2007
Sam Allardyce is so short of players in his injury hit Newcastle squad that yesterday he fielded London-bound Kieron Dyer. Allardyce says:
We used him because we were short and he played very well. But I don’t think we can keep him, for the reasons I gave last week.
Whatever your opinions of the man, you can’t help but feel for Allardyce as he picks up the pieces of years of profligacy and appalling decision making by the previous regimes. Newcastle have spent millions of pounds in wages on players who were very rarely fit: Dyer himself is a prime example.
Michael Owen and Shola Ameobi both missed the friendly win over Juventus, Mark Viduka is yet to play for the club since signing from Middlesbrough. Another summer acquisition, Joey Barton, is already out for the start of the season with a broken foot.
New chairman, new manager, but same old injury problems.
Alex Ferguson described the fact that Scholes injury is not serious as “100% good news”.
What was feared to be possible ligament damage was in fact just bruising on the cartilage. Scholes is likely to miss United’s opening two games (the Community Shield against Chelsea and the home fixture against Reading), but will be free to return after that.
The fate of Owen Hargreaves remains slightly less clear. The £17m midfielder is suffering from knee tendinitis, and Ferguson is uncertain as to when he will finally be able to make his United debut. The manager said:
It’s becoming an irritant rather than a big problem.
Which, amusingly, is how most people regard Owen Hargreaves.
PeakFootball.com can exclusively reveal that Cesc Fabregas was flown home from Arsenal’s Austrian training camp last night with a knee injury. Whilst the extent of the problem remains unclear, Arsenal were concerned enough to send Cesc packing for scans in London this morning. It is expected that Arsene Wenger will reveal the nature of the problem after tonight’s friendly with FC Salzburg.
Still only 20, Fabregas has managed to steer clear of major injuries so far in his short career. Arsenal fans will be hoping that this is just a scare in what has been a troublesome pre-season period.
UPDATE: Scans for Fabregas brought positive news, and he should return to training within a week.
West Ham are either very brave or very stupid. After the disastrous blow of losing Julien Fabuert, the Hammers moved to replace him with Sweden’s international captain, Freddie Ljungberg. The problem? Ljungberg is arguably one of the most injury-prone players in the Premier League.
Internal bleeding in his knee, bruised ribs, back problems, foot injuries, and various hip problems (including one caused by a belatedly infected tattoo); all of these have become familiar to Ljungberg in the last few years. West Ham have replaced a crock with an injury timebomb.
There’s no doubt that on his day, Ljungberg is an excellent player. But investing £3m and astronomical wages (the English press reported £60k p/week, whilst the Swedish went for a ludicrous £103k) in a player who seems to have missed at least ten league games in every season of his career is a very significant gamble indeed.
What do you reckon: crock or gold?
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Unremarkably, Joey Barton will miss the start of the Premiership season. Remarkably, it’s not due to suspension. He hasn’t been up to his usual high-jinx of viciously assaulting team-mates or putting cigars out in peoples’ eyes. Instead, he has suffered the most fashionable injury in football: the fractured metatarsal. A statement on the Newcastle United website read:
“He sustained a partial fracture of the fifth metatarsal in his left foot.”
Barton picked up the injury during a 1-1 draw in a friendly with Carlisle - a game which Michael Owen missed due to a thigh strain. It seems that a change in manager hasn’t yet brought Newcastle a change in fitness fortunes.
Question: What is more annoying than spending £6m on a new midfielder, only for him to miss the first half of the season with a ruptured achilles tendon?
Answer: Spending £6.1m on a new midfielder, as West Ham did on Julien Faubert, only for him to miss the first half of the season with a ruptured achilles tendon.
Faubert, who was viewed by many as a replacement for Israeli Yossi Benayoun, picked up the injury in a friendly against Czech side Sigma Olomouc. George Cooper, West Ham’s head physiotherapist, revealed the injury had come “completely out of the blue”:
Julien has no history of any achilles problems and this kind of rupture is usually predisposed by past steroid injections in the area - something he has never had - so it is a major shock.
“A major shock”? Really? West Ham ought to be getting used to this kind of thing by now. Signing for them is essentially a cast iron guarantee that you will get injured. I’d suspect any player declaring an interest in joining West Ham is looking to cash in big time on their health insurance.
Take for example, Lucas Neil - signed for £1.5m, then out for a month with an ankle problem within days of finalising his contract. Or Nigel Quashie, picked up for the same fee and missing since March with a foot injury.
And who can forget la pièce de résistance: the £6m January outlay on Matthew Upson, who has since amassed a spectacular 41 minutes playing time for the club.
Latest signings Richard Wright, Scott Parker, and Craig Bellamy should beware - it’s surely only a matter of time until it’s their turn…
Two England Captains could take to the field of LA Galaxy’s Home Depot centre on Saturday, each suffering with their own injury problems.
John Terry broke a toe in Wednesday’s 1-0 win over the Suwon Bluewings. However, scans have since shown that it was merely a hairline fracture. He took a full part in training yesterday and is almost certain to face the Americans.
David Beckham’s battle with his ever-expanding ankle is well documented. Galaxy General Manager and former professional scarecrow impersonator Alexei Lalas attempts to bring us the latest:
There is a possibility that he is going to play and if there was no possibility that he wasn’t then we would just tell you that. I think it’s pretty clear.
It might be just me, but I think there are so many ifs and buts and double negatives in there that I think it is fairly conclusively not “pretty clear”.
Good old Alexei. Always keeps us guessing.
Since his move to LA Galaxy, David Beckham has claimed that the long-distance flights involved will not have an adverse effect on his career. Yesterday, his manager Frank Yallop disagreed:
It was a long flight and it swelled up pretty bad and today he was not as comfortable as he should have been.
This puts his expected debut against Chelsea on Saturday in jeopardy. Of course, seeing as it’s just a friendly, any other player would be rested. However, the financial investment that the Galaxy have placed in him sugests that Beckham will be playing with crutches if need be.
Of the many possibilities that this headline implies, the sole truth is that Alex Ferguson has confirmed that Ji-Sung Park may be out until 2008 with a knee problem.
It was back in April when United decided to send Park to the United States to be operated on by Dr. Richard Steadman - the man credited with saving the careers of Alan Shearer and Michael Owen. Ferguson said at the time:
There was an option to send him to Sweden or America and we decided to send him to the States to see Richard Steadman in Colorado. There was no clear reason for the injury and we couldn’t get to the bottom of it. So we decided we should send him to the best in the world.
Steadman enjoys a tremendous reputation in the world of sport, and will be the featured subject of a future piece here on peakfootball.com. United will be hoping his amazing record continues with Park’s rehabilitation in time for next year’s title run-in.
