Injury updates re Joey and Ireland and a bit of transfer speculation
Posted on March 8th, 2011 | 4 Comments |
There isn’t a huge amount of news around this morning and I can’t do my thinking posts until I’ve had least 2 meals, so I thought I’d sum up bits of this and that
There’s good and bad news on the injury front.
Joey and Stephen Ireland look good for Stoke but Jose seems to be a doubt. Pardew said:
“Ireland trained Thursday, and looked like he was going to be OK, and then got the thigh injury which kept him out of training on Friday.
“Joey actually trained Friday thinking that he’d be OK, but again didn’t feel quite right.
“I don’t think there’ll be a problem for Joey and Stephen against Stoke.
“We’ll wait and see with Jose. He’s a key player for us, and that injury affected us more than any other one.”
I know Joey’s had issues in the past and we’ve sometimes given him some grief, but two names I like to see on the team sheet are Barton and Tiote. It kind of gives me that extra boost of confidence as we go into a game.
I can’t find anything at all on Jonas beyond the fact the he supposedly picked up an injury on Saturday. We’ll just have to wait and see on that.
As you know, I do sometimes report transfer speculation without taking it too seriously, but if the Mirror is to be believed then we’re after PSV Eindhoven’s Jeremain Lens. It may just be my dreadful memory but wasn’t there something about him being ‘linked’ a year or so ago?
One thing that isn’t true is our alleged interest in Roma’s John Arne Riise. Pardew simply said:
“It’s not true – absolutely not true.”
So that’s told us!
Now I know I ramble and I’m really trying not to (there are support groups I’ve joined), but I heard a horrific story that I fealt I’d share. As you know, my knee is playing up, so I’ve been investigating various things about it and some chap told me a story that astounded me. He went to one hospital and they didn’t scan or anything but the consultant said to him in all seriousness: “If it helps with the pain I can take your leg off above the knee”.
He went to another hospital, had his knee fixed and has been fine since. I suppose the moral of the story is to always get a second opinion.
Although that never works with the wife and that old classic about “does this dress make my bum look big?” and us poor blokes can never answer that one correctly. We’re either dishonest or insulting. I tried to explain to the wife that it’s less about the dress and more about the bum, but that didn’t make me popular.
Thank you Mr Payen, most entertaining: we’ll be in touch with your agent.