Window Cleaner

Right new news from the Echo. Definitely out, Artur,Guly,Victor. Everybody else could or could not play but a few have ongoing injuries.

There's an injury update in the Echo, very much as a few of us have said José and Maya are struggling with injuries. That means that the two development lads aren't even good enough to replace injured regulars on the bench. As I've said before if a player is going to make the first team he'll have shown up somewhere in the vicinity by the time he's 18 or 19. Once you get to the ages of Stephens and Turnbull you're as likely as not to not make it. If they're not to be trusted on the bench when senior players have virtually no chance of being risked then you might just as well ship them out to the stiffs somewhere.

Isn't Gazza from Santa Fé ?

you have to look at one of the items with Mauricio on it, the one where he isn't sitting with his interpreter. It's just a video of him speaking in the gym with a few action shots of the players training outside.

that will be the day

got gloves on, so Will Britt it is then.

it's his hand and he'd need that in every circumstance because let's face it the less he kicks out the better it is. Last time we saw him in the training gallery he had a neoprene strap on his broken hand, then he appeared in the Uncovered last Sunday without it. Now he's to be seen in goal with his gloves on. What all that means I couldn't say but he's going forward obviously. José also appears in the training video today, something which he didn't last week so that may be a good sign as well. KD looks spritely bouncing about in goal, another good sign. Only downers, no Maya or Dani.

can't see he'd be stopping shots with his hands if one was still suspect really. We can only be hopeful on that.

José and Luke both seemed to be at training, can't see Maya or Dani though. Seems we've acquired a number 43 as well, who would that be then?

Strangely strange, if you look at the video that goes with Mauricio's pre match interview Davis and Boruc are both to be seen training in goal with their gloves on. Think that could mean that the 3 wise men have turned up at Staplewood bearing miracle remedies ?

he was about 12 at the time though, Gazza hasn't got what it takes, no amount of coaching will change that.

that seems to have worked out well then, bad habits like the occasional save or non f*cked up coming out for a cross I could live with. I like Mauricio and wouldn't criticise him as a rule but if that really is his opinion on Gazza then he's wrong. Being loaned out hasn't done Courtois any harm.

Sure about that ? Not even one ? How old do you think De Gea is then or Cszesny ? The fact that they've been playing for top sides for a while now has obviously thrown you. In fact if you look at all PL keepers habitually starting games i think you'd find that the vast majority are in fact under 30.

so just 15 or 16 points in our remaining 21 games according to you then. Won't happen, sooner or later we'll recover our injured regulars and things will pick up, starting with some sort of effective goalkeeper.

but not utilisable to any great purpose.

might as well, no point in giving sky's hard earned to the tax man.

won't be MP who decides who goes out on loan and who doesn't. That's a development/finance thing I believe. It's a bit odd that we have Gazzaniga, Cropper and Britt as our young keepers and not one of them has been loaned out even for a short time to get a bit of experience. Assuming that AB and KD are the first team keepers that leaves us with 3 princesses for one glass slipper or whatever the old fairy tale says about that anyway.

it affects the way they play though, yellow cards are an occupational hazard for DMs and CBs and not having enough cover just in case(which shouldn't be the case with our squad but injuries have decided otherwise) just dampens their effectiveness.

can't remember too much about Bevan but Blayney and Poke weren't absolutely ridiculous on the few occasions when they had to step up.

yes and when you need a change in midfield what do you so then, Reed isn't an option really.

It would be faily good if all of Everton's 4 carders got a yellow and neither of ours did, can't see Morgan and José making the Chelsea game without a suspension though. Too many games before the amnesty this year surely.

Shaw was pronounced ill by the docs and was not available for selection. If he'd been iffy but playable he'd have been on the bench but he wasn't.

Jos was taking roasting after roasting from the others on Sunday, he just wasn't present and as we know the lads have an internal autocriticism policy.

but we saw the alternative to Fox, JWP on the right and Chambers on the left....that's it, MPo isn't going to play Cork at RB from the start because he's not very great at it. Even if we'd started JWP and Chambers how would we have eventually overcome a midfield change...stick Fox in there because all those who seem to be dreaming of Reed being played as a CM in the PL at any time soon are seriously deluded I think. We don't have enough fit players just now, hopefully that will change for Thursday's game but I suspect that we didn't even have 13 fully fit first team regulars on Sunday.