In St. Truiden's 2-0 win over Standard Liege on Sunday, Standard's Reginal Goreux (teammate to
king of the dirty tacklers, Axel Witsel) attempted to decimate the ankle of Wim Mennes, but it
didn't work.
Not only did Mennes' ankle not turn to dust, it was even functional requiring nothing more than
an ice pack wrapped to it as he walked back to the dressing room.
Featuring the most fleeting glimpse of Sparky's incredibly naff trophy cabinet/sideboard...
"Boof. Stick that in your technical area, Arsene!"
See, Hughes could play a bit, with his famously strong ankles. Shame he's turned into one of the
most colourless, dour managers around, and a bit of a wind-up merchant too.
Morning all, a quick Saturday round-up for you. Who wants a lengthy round-up anyway?
The team news ahead of tomorrow's epic crunch battle with the smashers of mugs is that Abou
Diaby is probably back. And that's about it. Nobody else. So no Eduardo, as far as we know.
Normally the team news is quite definitive, it's all a bit up in the air really.
Lionel Messi will not play this weekend in Barcelona's league match against Espanyol. The star
Argentine forward suffered a fairly serious ankle injury earlier in the week when Barcelona
faced-off against Dynamo Kyiv in Champions League competition.
And just to make the young superstar's luck a little bit worse the injury transpired in the last
few minutes of the match on a hard tackle from an opposing player.
Though Boulogne's Adefemi Olubayo was already shown a yellow card in the second half of his
side's 2-0 loss to Marseille two weeks ago, he was still shown a straight red for this attempt to
slide right through Hatem Ben Arfa's ankles like they were bowling pins. To his credit though,
after starting to trot off the pitch following the red card, Olubayo turns around and gives Ben
Arfa a handshake and a hug for almost removing his feet from his body.
It was late Saturday night. Not a creature was stirring, not even my chocolate lab puppy.
When all through the house there was a shout; Estudiantes had--again--almost knocked Leo Messi
out.
Nobody in football takes more knocks than Messi. Hello, Manny Paquiao doesn't get hit as much as
Messi.
