Moisés Caicedo was a surprise absentee from (the open portion of) Thursday’s training, and, as it usually turns out in such cases, it is indeed a real concern that kept him out. As confirmed by Xabi Alonso in today’s pre-match press conference, the midfielder is dealing with some “discomfort” in his lower leg. Just don’t call it a calf injury!
“After the last game he had little problems, so we expect to check tomorrow different situation, and Moi is one of them. It’s a discomfort more than the [old]
calf [injury].”
Those other situations include a lingering injury for Jorrel Hato (another mystery set to run for “some more weeks”) as well as the longer-term absences of João Pedro, Maxence Lacroix, and Reece James (oh, and I guess Jamie Gittens, too, if anyone cares) — none of whom are close to returning.
In better news, Emiliano Martínez is back in contention already, just three weeks after suffering a fractured jaw in our game against Everton. Emi’s now got a mask that he’s getting used to, which, as the manager assured us, serves greater purpose than just scaring children and adults alike.
“The mask I guess is from a specialist, not from a Halloween shop [but] tomorrow, we have the last training session before Sunday and we will decide but he’s training. He’s training well.
“All the decisions are tough, you know the positions, but it’s very good that Emi has made a great effort to be back that he’s been you know ahead of the plans to to be part of the team and tomorrow we will check and Sunday we will take the final decision.
-Xabi Alonso; source: Football.London via AOL
Young Penders, despite his gaffe against Spurs, has done quite well in Martínez’s absence, keeping a clean sheet against Manchester United (featuring a save nominated for Save of the Month) and almost becoming the penalty shootout hero against Liverpool in the League Cup (before we failed to convert the winning spot kick).
Sunderland are bottom of the table and have won just one game all season. But no game is easy in the Premier League, and we did lose to them at the Stadium of Light just a few months ago, on the final day of last season. (In fact they did the double over us on their way to European qualification.)
