Injury Update 24/11/09

Lots of interesting injury news from football365.com today:

Edwin Van der Sar, Gary Neville, Rio Ferdinand, Jonny Evans, John O'Shea and Fabio all missed training on Tuesday as Manchester United prepared for Wednesday night's clash with Besiktas.

But the good news for United is that Dimitar Berbatov and Ji-Sung Park both trained after missing recent games through injury, while Owen Hargreaves stepped up his training away from the group.

Chelsea have been boosted ahead of their clash with Porto by the returns of Didier Drogba (chest), Michael Ballack (knee) and Deco (groin) but Frank Lampard (thigh) stayed at home to work on his fitness ahead of Sunday's game with Arsenal.

For Blackburn, defender Gael Givet is a doubt ahead of the Premier League trip to Fulham on Wednesday. The French defender could miss out after suffering a dead leg.

To Wolves and Stephen Ward will make his comeback in the reserves tonight after undergoing knee surgery back in August.

Terrible news for Sunderland, who could lose leading scorer Darren Bent for three weeks with a hamstring strain.

"Darren has gone away for a scan and we're not expecting the results back until Thursday or Friday, but there is a real worry that it is a hamstring strain," Bruce said.

"If that turns out to be the case, then we are looking at losing him for a minimum of three weeks. We will not know anything until the results comes back so we will have to keep our fingers crossed."

Everton have suffered another injury setback after captain Phil Neville aggravated a knee injury which now requires surgery.

Neville will have an operation on Tuesday on the knee he injured against Fulham in September.

Last weekend manager David Moyes had been hopeful Neville may have been fit for Wednesday night's Barclays Premier League clash at Hull, but he has now been sidelined for a few more weeks.

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The Bent news will have real significance because I imagine a lot of people were looking to pick him up vs Wigan this weekend after their Spurs humiliation...big problem for Sunderland as they'll have to do without his goals threat & it surely makes Chris Kirkland a far better pick.

I'm obviously glad to hear that Drogba will be back as I stll hold him at £10m - I reckon he'll cause Arsenal all sorts of problems even at the Emirates - Chelsea are on fire.

There's very annoying news for Givet owners, as he's "done a Milner" & got injured before the 2nd game of his double week. Just 24 hours to go until the 2nd round of games for this week & I'm praying my 8 players can get me from 50 to somewhere near 100 points. I'm not holdng my breath mind you, and I'm not sure even 100 will be enough to progress to Round 3 of the Blog Cup.

Finally, something that I've noticed recently is anonymous posters in the comments sections slating other posters because they're writing about Fantasy Football. If that's your idiotic opinion then I'd rather you didn't read the blog. One particular post was aimed at Chris (who has been one of the best contributers since the blog began) regarding an excellent post he had taken the time to write. This sort of trolling is pointless & pathetic. I have to ask - why are you here wasting your time here on a FANTASY FOOTBALL WEBSITE if you don't want to read about Fantasy Football? I guess stupidity know no bounds.

Everyone else - keep up the fantastic work, both in the comments section & in the chat room! :)

Cheers,
AM

Update: Just read that Portsmouth have sacked Paul Hart. Stupid decision in my opinion - they've been playing far better than their position shows, very unlucky vs Stoke & the players were fully behind him. I guess Avram Grant will take over? Whatever the decision, I can't imagine the players will be too happy, confidence will be shot to pieces & they face Man Utd in Week 13...uh oh!