Thigh injuries
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.
Martin Jol is sweating on the fitness of £10m signing Gareth Bale, after the Welshman limped out of his debut match against St. Patrick’s Athletic in Dublin.
Bale, who had impressed the Irish crowd with his set piece delivery, was replaced with nine minutes remaining, clutching his thigh as he departed.
Tottenham now face a nervous wait for the scan results - it was a lack of left-sided players that prompted Bale’s signing in the first place. A superficial blow would mean that he’d miss only a couple of days training, but even the slightest tear in the muscle fibres would force him to miss two or three weeks.
Spurs are as yet undeterred in their transfer dealings, and in Kevin-Prince Boateng have targetted a player whose injury problems are almost as bad as his name. At just 20 years old, Boateng has already undergone two major knee surgeries, and there’s even talk that he may struggle to pass a medical. More as and when we get it.
