By Tony Attwood
Yes the car thieves – the international managers who go round nicking players, wrecking them, handing them back and then demanding that that players are made fit for the next round of games.
So who suffered this time around?
Well they certainly worked hard with the wrecking ball, knackering as many players as possible with their useless and pointless games. 16 players got done, and the team suffering the most is Liverpool! Here is the list…
Arsenal: 1 (Sokratis Papastathopoulos). Expected to miss the Leicester match.
Brighton: 1 (Gaetan Bong). Details unclear.
Burnley: 1 (Stephen Ward). Surgery pending
Chelsea: 1 (Ethan Ampadu). Knee injury
Crystal Palace: 1 (Wilfred Zaha). Slight injury
Everton: 1 (Idrissa Gueye) Ankle injury.
Huddersfield: 1 (Philip Billing). Came home early but details scarce
Liverpool: 4 (Naby Keita). Hamstring. Could be out for a while. (Sadio Mane) – broken thumb expected to miss one game. (Virgil van Dijk). Two broken ribs. (Mohamed Salah) – muscle strain
Manchester City: 1 (Danilo). “Left the pitch in tears”
Newcastle United: 1 (Ciaran Clark). A major doubt for the weekend.
Southampton: 2 (Shane Long). A collection of knocks and bruises. (Stuart Armstrong). Calf problems.
Tottenham Nomads: 1 (Victor Wanyama) Thigh injury, not too serious.
West Ham: 2 (Arthur Masuaku) Ankle problem but not very serious. Robert Snodgrass. Ankle problem.
Of course some of these players will be fit enough by the weekend to play, but it shows that the car thieves who parade themselves as international managers are up and raging, meandering and getting players to kick hell out of each other.
In the current premier league injury table according to physioroom.com, West Ham and Huddersfield are ahead of the pack with eight men out of it, followed by Manchester City, Tottenham Nomads, Liverpool!, Newcastle United and Manchester United.
Arsenal are in the bottom half of the table lurking on four. Cech, Mavrapanos and Koscielny are the other three besides Sokratis. Physioroom have Sokratis listed as a “slight doubt”.
The hero of the idiotic internationals was seemingly Mkhitaryan who scored one and had two assists as his country beat Macedonia 4-0.
Meanwhile Eddie Nketiah got his 18th goal in 19 games, or so I am told. I wonder how much longer before we see him an absolute fixture in the Europa and League cup games, at the very least.
OT: Montemurro Signs Long Term Contract
A few articles on Arsenal.com about the women’s manager. Including a long interview with Joe Montemurro.
I like this quote:
https://www.arsenal.com/news/joe-montemurro-my-own-words
Congratulation on signing up for extension!
Also OT: Fulham owner NOT buying Wembley
I guess the FA governing council couldn’t stomach 600 million going into the coffers of all the senior FA officials.
I think we’ve offered it to Germany , for a bit of positive spin.
Hmmm. International managers operating under the auspices of Fifa and it’s confederation units are actually causing problems for the PL clubs by demanding for their players to come and play in confederations organised football matches for them. And Arsenal FC is reported to be hit as Sokratis, one of their regular game starting CB in the PL is injured. But are these club players getting paid by the Fifa’s confederation units for playing for them in their organised football matches? I think they are. In the case of any club players local of foreign based, the NFF pay the players who they’ve invited and have come to play for Nigeria the reported amount of $3000 – 5000 per game. But what amount of money is being paid to the clubs that owned these players by the Fifa’s confederation units for using their players I don’t know?
It’s not only International games breaking our players – Kim Little will miss up to 10 weeks with a cracked fibula following a terrible challenge in our 5-0 win at Chelsea last Sunday. Needless to say Drew Spence who committed the assault got the minimum possible sanction – a yellow card and is not going to miss any of the weeks that Kim will.
Andrew – that tackle was nothing short of its result – a broken (fracture) leg. The official was incompetent not to give a red card and should be penalised for being lenient.
In this day & age if officials cannot protect players by being stringent in the application of the football laws, then it is incumbent on the clubs to get the law of the land involved. Assault on the sporting field has been allowed too much freedom.
Menace. Couldn’t agree more.
I sent a message to Gary ‘O’Driscoll saying the very same yesterday.
I watched a video of him recently espousing the philosophy of Arsenal, and how All Footballers should be thinking about life after football, and how there is a doctors duty of care to think long term ,rather than short term. This was wrt concussion , but should apply to all injuries.
I posed the question, are football professionals expected to have a duty of care to one another? If ,as I believe, they do, then should acts of negligence by players …drew spence, or referees, be punishable by law, if not by the games ruling body??
Needless to say, I don’t expect him to reply, as he doesn’t know me from Adam.
I am a medic tho, so if he doesn’t respond, I’ll be signing up to one of his conferences to introduce myself😬
Andrew.
I’ve seen your interpretation of this tackle a number of times now, and am basing my arguments upon you.
I’ve read many of your reports, and have no reason to think otherwise.
But, can anyone find any footage? I have tried utube and twitter. No joy.
BTSprout showed the game, but I can’t seem to access any recordings.