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Fair play to Micah for the chat, but are you really, really trying? Just watched their chance before our goal, where Okore had to get a late foot on it (around 16 mins). Left his man in space and to say he made a half-hearted attempt to get back to him is an understatement. Even if say it wasn't his man, if you see an opponent in on goal you bust your ass to get to him. Maybe you don't reach him, but when you've got a man sprinting at you it adds pressure to the shot.

Fractures of some small bones don't always show up on x-ray right away. For example, the scaphoid in the wrist may be x-rayed numerous times before it shows a break.

As vital as Benteke was in 12/13. His performance against QPR was sensational. Should be in his prime but it's amazing to see the role confidence plays.

I'm waiting until after January to judge Remi. I'm optimistic he knows the squad is weak and not good enough and has just been trying to limit the damage until he gets players in ASAP next month. That, or he was promised money by Randy and won't be given it. Time will tell.

Lescott does not have the legs to play with one day rest, and I wouldn't risk Okore either with his history and just coming off a layoff. What other options does he have?

What on Earth was he doing for their goal?

That 3rd goal is 100% on Richardson. Didn't track HIS man, didn't open his mouth to tell Clark there was a man coming in.

At this point I'd be happy if it was just a knee dislocation (patella / knee cap). That looks like he's blown out his entire tibiofemoral joint!

The OS lists him as #14.

Do we know what his record is when he wears the gilet vs when he doesn't??

And his initials are IS! Would he get a work permit Why not? He'd fit in quite well in Birmingham.

It's depressing to realize that we have fallen so far as a club that the only thing we have to look forward to are Tim's comments about this u-turn.

He's going to score the winner.

Do we know when Valencia's buyback option expires? If it expires at the end of this season, is it not plausible that Tim sees how talented Carles is yet is confident that he didn't need him this season to stay up therefore has "hidden" him to 1) help him integrate into English football/society and 2) protect him from being bought back by Valencia?

Sherwood mentioned in his BBC post-match that Clark will be out for the rest of the season

He is getting paid a tremendous amount of money and is a professional so he should be giving 100% every second on the pitch. However, if he really is "not trying", then I get it. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I understand it. Here we have a young, potentially world-class striker who just missed a chance that 99.99% of people will never, ever experience, and that is be a star in the World Cup. With the way things ended up, I honestly believe they could have made the Final with him in the lineup. If you were working a job where you were getting absolutely no help and asked to do everything on your own while getting little to no short-term benefit/reward, money aside would you be happy with your job? Would you continuously put in all your effort when when you previously did that you suffered a severe setback (injury) and missed your dream of a lifetime opportunity (WC) because of it? With the crap the club is serving up at the moment (both in the office and tactically on the pitch), would you risk potentially suffering another severe injury knowing that with the way the company is intent on doing things (the wayw e're set up on the pitch) that energy wasted would be all for naught, especially knowing you won't get fired either way? The talent is still there, we see it from time to time, but even if he worked his socks off we would still be awful because of our tactics. So is the risk really worth the reward? He's a beast, but he's not bionic. Again, I don't agree with this mindset but realistically you've got to put yourself in his shoes to understand. I believe that you should put 100% in, especially getting that salary, but I get it. It's not even that this is modern football; a career is short and he is wasting it here at the moment. He sees all his Belgium buddies improving and being successful, and unfortunately under Lambert and Lerner he will never, ever achieve anything here at club level. I hope for a takeover and a new manager that would re-invigorate his interest to be here as I want nothing more than for CB to stay at the club and become a legend, but in this current state of affairs it's really not in his best individual interest to stay here. So if you know you won't have success at a company why would you risk further setback and worst-case career? And no, he doesn't owe us anything. He kept us up in his first season and that alone was more than expected. He was already in the Belgium first XI before he flourished here, so I don't concur with the argument that we helped make him. Playing in that team he would have been noticed shortly after, if not already. Watch how he performs next month for the national team. It may not even be that he lacks effort. Physical recovery is one thing, but mental recovery is another. For all we know his injury came while chasing down or making a run off the ball. Did we ever find that out?

The quality is there, just look at the ball to Westwood at the death. Watch his movement for Gil's goal. He looks on empty. Needs a rest I feel.

The important thing to know is that the tibia is always fixated with metal plates and rods. The fibula, however, is not always plated and can be left as is, depending on the severity of the fracture. I would assume based on what I've read that the fibular fracture was not severe enough after realigning it to warrant surgery. I would find it very hard to believe that doctors would have initially missed any fractures given it was compound, etc. Sometimes the fibula does not heal 100% in the sense that the calcification occurs as normal but the is no unification between the ends of the fracture. The function of the fibula is for muscle attachment and not for weight bearing, so it is normal for doctors to allow loaded activity with it not fully healed (Libor mentions this in the interview). Also, bones only adapt and heal to the stresses they are placed under (Wolff's Law). With that in mind, I think there was a discrepancy between how severe the English doctors thought the fibula break was versus the Italian doctors. The issue could also be that the Italian doctors gave Libor a training protocol based on what I just mentioned, expecting him to progress and for the bone to heal. However, they weren't able to directly follow-up with him under their protocols. The surgery report would have been forwarded to the English doctors so that they knew exactly what was found and what was done. They would have known how the fibula was treated. If the fibula fails to heal as normal there are further procedures that can then be done. From what I can understand from the translation, Libor had a bone graft, which is the unwanted, but normal, next step. It is possible that the English doctors had a viewpoint that was different than the Italians'. This is usual in the medical world. I had a player with the same injury that was cleared for full game play without a fully healed fibula. He of course had pain but didn't have any complications. Another surgeon might not have cleared him. It would be interesting to see who exactly Libor was sent to in England. Not by name, but by specialty. Surgeons are a quirky type and they don't always like to operate on other surgeon's patients, but I would find it hard to believe that the caliber of surgeon a professional club should be sending their players to would be maltreating patients.

A broken leg is very different from a ruptured Achilles. I'd say on average the return from an Achilles is 6 months, and that's on the quick side. I don't know the extent of Libor's injury, whether it was both the tibia and fibula, whether it was compound or not, etc. I didn't expect to see him back at full fitness for 12 months.

Sign him up, please.

First of all, your rush to blame someone is pathetic. Second of all, the Achilles rupture is generally a non contact injury down to bad luck. Third of all, why would they say "thought" if someone actually did? It is one of the tell tale signs of an achilles injury that they think they've been kicked from behind Source: I'm a sports therapist here in Canada (and no I don't mean this to be cheeky, just wanted to clarify)

Hey guys, long time reader from Canada. Recent sports therapy (Canadian equivalent) graduate and decided to join so I could make a medically informed post in the Benteke thread to correct some things others had said. Made my first trip to VP in January for the Arsenal match and hopefully I'll get more chances in the future.