august 15th
08.45 – Well, those bully boy tactics really worked for Fergie last night eh? Enjoy…..
What do the following players have in common? Don Hutchison, Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Stefan Freund, Robert Pires, Juninho, Gus Poyet. Yep, they’ve all done their cruciate ligament in the last 6 months. I remember the first time I ever heard about this injury was when it happened to Niall Quinn – this was around 1993 or so, certainly he was struggling to be fit for the World Cup in 94 and the injury was considered career threatening. The next time was Roy Keane after his now legendary skirmish with Alfie Haaland.
Now it seems that players are picking up this kind of injury more and more regularly. At Arsenal we know all about it with Bob and Gio and of course Mathew Upson who suffered damaged cruciate ligaments against Leicester a couple of seasons back. Is it that previously they didn’t know what kind of injury players had suffered, or is a new phenomenon (do do do do dooo) entirely? Whatever is happening, it seems to be occurring much more regularly. Anyone got any theories?
Arsenal have redesigned their website for the new season – you can have a look here. I suppose the biggest change as far as I’m concerned is that you will have to pay to listen to live match commentary. Not so good for us gooners abroad, although it was possible to listen to the games from broadcast.com or Capital Gold in seasons gone by. Arsenal will have their own commentator, so we’ll have to wait and see if Capital still have the rights, otherwise I’ll have to make a contribution to the new stadium fund to listen to the lads.
Following yesterday’s bizarre Trevor Francis story, it seems the player he gave ‘a clip around the ear’, reserve keeper Alex Kolinko, has made a complaint to the police. Apparently he laughed when Bradford took the lead against Palace the other night, Francis quite rightly took exception to this and according to some reports had to be dragged off his own player. Life in the Nationwide eh…?
