Okay, excuse me, a mad conspiracy theorist needs a rant.
Does anyone else find the nature of injury and its announcement at this club highly suspicious?
Take Barton for example. A "minor foot problem" which was going to be subject to a late fitness test quickly became a four month absence. If Caulkin to be believed, we will discover today/tomorrow that Steven Taylor's "slight hamstring strain" will become a six week absence. Both of these injuries were picked up in training, and both were broken to us gently by the club. Is that simply because the scale of the injury took a while to become apparent?
Well, let's take Wor Shola's foot trouble. Again, this was a "minor knock" subject to a late fitness test. This then was recognised as (almost a month (A MONTH!) after the injury was picked up) a broken foot. Then we had a two-month absence slapped on it. The club never mentioned whether this was two months from the date of the injury, or from the date of the announcement a month later. We then later here how pleased the club are that Shola might be back before January, and how ahead of schedule that would be. Now, even the village idiot can count from his date of injury in August and see that an August - January sideline is a five month absence. So a minor foot problem, much like Joey Barton's injury, becomes a five-month lay-off. In the case of Shola, the club have broken to us gently that he might have a problem, slapped a very conservative injury estimate on him, and then broken fuller news of his injury laced behind some good news of "it could be worse!".
Do you ever see Manchester United or Chelsea faffing around like this? If Drogba's got a broken foot, everyone'll know how, where, who he's going to see and for how long he'll be out. Most importantly, the Chelsea physios would KNOW a broken foot when they see one, unlike ours apparently.
If our physios can't even diagnose a broken foot, we have a major problem. And if they can, we have another major problem: the club is pulling the wool over our eyes Soviet Union-style to make the situation seem better than it is. After all, if we knew the extent of all our players injuries, we'd put pressure on to buy a replacement. And we all know Ashley doesn't like pressure. He wants to be able to ruin the club quietly, in peace, without our nuisancesome selves getting in the way.
Additionally, as a sort of post-script, why the hell are our players picking up serious injuries in training? Ever see Cristiano Ronaldo or Rooney out for four months because they fell over in training? Or just pulled up while running, and ended up fracturing half their leg? Our injury curse doesn't exist, folks. It's not a curse. It's quite clearly the result of systemic underinvestment in the physio department, and some kind of flaw in our training practices which has never been corrected. Until we fix that, these mysterious, long-term injuries that need covering up will not disappear.
Now that I know Butt's in the team, I'd say 1-3 to Ipswich.