Injury blows for the Fulham game

November 28, 2008 by Martin Banks
Filed under: Aston Villa, Carlos Cuéllar, Injury News, John Carew, Luke Young, Nigel Reo-Coker 

Everything was going swimmingly, Carlos Cuellar had returned to training so was a possibility, but if he failed to recover fitness NRC could ably deputise, and we even had a selection headache between the five man midfield or a 4-4-2 which saw Carew return to the fold…

Then problems hit.

Down goes Carew

During training Carew has caused further problems to the back problem that has been keeping him on the sidelines of late. It now looks like he will be out for a number of weeks, further stressing the need to have reinforced in the striking area during the summer transfer window.

MON told the official site:

“John has a bit of a back problem again. We will have to monitor that. But it is looking as if he might miss a few weeks.

“He pulled up in training yesterday and it is something that needs more treatment.”

This will no doubt mean we will stick with the 4-5-1, with Gabby spearheading the attack, supported by Milner and Young.

Down goes Luke Young

Young didn’t train on Thursday in order to rest up a minor thigh problem he has, but it was purely a precaution according to O’Neill, so we’ll pretend we never heard anything about this one. He’s fine. Trust me, I’m a doctor (a doctor like Dr Peppers a doctor though unfortunately).

Down goes Reo-Coker

NRC has gone and got himself a nasty cold, no doubt from slagging it up in Birmingham and kissing all sorts of easy women! What? I never said that, don’t sue me :)

It does however make him a large doubt for the game tomorrow, meaning we now need to wait and see on Cuellar’s recovery. If they are both out we can no doubt see Nicky Shorey back in the team and Luke Young back to his preferred right side.

From the horses mouth (did I just call MON a horse?!):

“Nigel hasn’t trained for the past couple of days. He has the flu. We will see how this is later this evening and tomorrow.”

Up gets Cuellar?

The Spaniard returned to training on Thursday but didn’t take part in the full session, so his fitness is still a ‘wait and see’, as O’Neill will no doubt wait till the last minute before ruling him out.

“Carlos trained today on his own for most of the day but joined in with the rest of the group at the end. We will see how he is tomorrow.

So a number of problems casting a shadow over the pre-game excitement, but as we now have so much more strength in depth, hopefully everything should be tickety-boo and we can still field a team capable of winning the game.


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