Adebayor & Injury News

Firstly, Adebayor will be available for City's game vs Villa on Monday night:-

Manchester City striker Emmanuel Adebayor has been fined £25,000 for his controversial celebration against his former club Arsenal but only received a suspended two-match ban - partly due to fans provoking him.

Adebayor has already served a three-match suspension for violent conduct in a separate incident during the victory at Eastlands last month, although there was the possibility of further action after he sprinted the length of the pitch to celebrate in front of visiting fans following his headed goal.

It is understood the Togo striker was at Wembley to admit a charge of improper conduct to a Football Association regulatory commission hearing.

His admission was taken into account as was, crucially, the conduct of Arsenal fans.

"In reaching its decision the Commission took into account his admission of the charge, public apology and the extremely provocative nature of the abuse he received," read an FA statement.

"However, the commission also stated that players have a responsibility to conduct themselves in a proper manner and that such celebrations are unacceptable and have the potential to cause a serious public order incident."

I'm sure a £25,000 fine (roughly a quarter of his weekly wage) will make a huge difference to him.

Now on to injury news for today...

You may already know the headline news - Michael Owen will be about for two/three weeks after twanging his hamstring during Manchester United's win over Wolfsburg. But in case you missed them, here are the quotes from Sir Alex Ferguson...

"Michael felt a slight groin injury after training on Sunday. He thought he was fine to play but on a wet surface, when he tried to turn quickly, it came back again. It is not a serious one and I am not worried because players do get them, but he will be out for two to three weeks."

The newspapers have pitched this as an 'Owen World Cup blow' but let's face it, he would never have been involved anyway. One man who could miss out though is Jermain Defoe, who is struggling to recover from his hand injury, and is already a massive doubt for Tottenham's clash with Bolton on Saturday.

"He is struggling. Jermain dislocated two fingers against Burnley last Saturday and they couldn't get them back in," said Harry Redknapp. "But he has also fractured his hand. He spent all Saturday night in hospital and is struggling.

"Hopefully, he'll be OK for England but we'll have to wait and see."

Definitely missing from that game at the Reebok Stadium will be Bolton striker Johan Elmander, who picked up a hamstring injury in a reserve game on Monday.

"It's a hamstring injury which could have been a lot worse - they call it a grade one - and it's expected he will be out for seven to 10 days, that's at best," confirmed Bolton boss Gary Megson.

"We'll have to see, but he won't available for our game with Spurs at the weekend, and I don't think he'll be available for Sweden's games either."

There's good news for Burnley though, as captain Steve Caldwell came through an hour's football in the reserves against Hull and could make his first Premier League appearance of the season against Birmingham on Saturday, though Fernando Guerrero (hamstring) and Jay Rodriguez (ankle) both limped out of that game.

Sunderland boss Steve Bruce has admitted that he made an error in bringing Lee Cattermole back too quickly at the weekend as the Black Cats beat Wolves. Cattermole played only 45 minutes but will be back in the starting line-up against Manchester United on Saturday.

"I don't care who you are or what level you are at; if you miss two-and-a-half weeks because of injury and then try to play again in the Premier League after one day's training, it's going to be tough," said Bruce, who promised Cattermole would be "firing on all cylinders" at Old Trafford.

But Sunderland could be without John Mensah, who picked up a hamstring injury in training ahead of that United game.

For Stoke, Ricardo Fuller is still struggling with a groin injury which forced him to miss Saturday's defeat to Manchester United.

Tony Pulis said: "Ric did some jogging with the physio on Tuesday but he missed training on Wednesday with flu symptoms and we will have to see how he goes. It will be a late decision."

Hull will again give a fitness test to defender Anthony Gardner, who has missed the last four Premier League games with a knee injury.

There's some rare good news for Birmingham, with Franck Queudrue returning to full training today after his hamstring injury. He could be joined for the trip to Burnley by Stuart Parnaby (thigh).

Wolves midfielder Dave Jones will be out of action for two months after undergoing knee surgery.

The 24-year-old suffered the setback against his former club Manchester United in the Carling Cup at Old Trafford.

Jones tried to train ahead of last weekend's clash with Sunderland but was not fit enough to play at the Stadium Of Light.

He underwent a scan and his worst fears have been realised, with the ex-England Under-21 player out of action until the start of December.

Wolves boss Mick McCarthy confirmed: "Jones has had a clean-up operation in his knee and will be out for two months."

Additional news - Arsenal's Eduardo will miss the weekend's game with a reoccurrence of a thigh injury, meaning the rumours surfacing in the blog comments of my previous post regarding Van Persie being rested are almost certainly untrue. Likewise, no news of any injury to Rooney so again it's probably just rubbish.

A reminder that The Blog Cup starts this Weekend for all members of the 3 Blog Leagues. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, please click here. Remember, The Blog Cup is just a bit of fun so don't sacrifice long term strategy for it (unless you really want to!!).

Also, remember we have the Facebook Group which is continuing to grow in numbers & helpes me put faces to names & have some additional chat. If you head there now you may well get a pretty good idea of my current team...;)

Week 8 Preview & Week 7 Match Previews will be up tomorrow. At the moment I'm trying to get at least "1 of each" from Man U, Arsenal, Everton, Spurs & Wolves to get a nice balance rather than lumping all my hope on one team in particular. How are your teams shaping up?

Cheers,
AM