Now this isn’t such good news.
News is breaking that Danny Murphy will be out for three weeks after sustaining a knee injury in the win over Hull on Monday night. The Fulham captain picked up the problem when trying to turn his man and play the ball past him at a throw-in and the incident was ignored by referee Martin Atkinson. Murphy bravely tried to battle on but was soon replaced by Jonathan Greening.
By my reckoning, a three-week injury lay off will mean Fulham will have to do without Murphy at least until the trip to Birmingham on November 21st.
UPDATE: Here’s Hodgson on the Murphy setback.
Danny Murphy joins the injury list that we had for the Hull game, which is Dickson Etuhu, Andy Johnson and Simon Davies.
Unfortunately Danny got injured during our game against Hull on Monday evening. We’re still assessing the injury and hoping it isn’t extremely serious but it’s serious enough to keep him out of Thursday’s game and the game at the weekend and maybe longer but we’re hoping the tendon that was damaged is still attached and that there will be no need for an operation.
We’ll be very lucky if he comes back before the next international window. I’m really hoping because there is an international window he’ll have even longer to recover. I would seriously hope that he would be fit after that but that’s the best we can hope for at the moment.
He’s the Captain of the team and a very good player. He’s been playing very well for us and every team misses their good players. It’s the same loss in the same way as Johnson, Davies and Etuhu are losses but you have to put up with that in football and that’s why you have a squad of players.
I was very pleased with Jonathan Greening when he came on for Danny the other night and Chris Baird did an excellent job replacing Dickson Etuhu so I can only hope they will continue in the same vein and continue to play well so we don’t miss the players that are injured.
I couldn’t understand why the physio sent him back on to the pitch. It looked pretty obvious the way he went down that he wasn’t going to be able to complete the game and sending back on could only have increased the risk of him making it worse.
It was pretty odd, wasn’t it? I turned to my mate when he collapsed in a heap and said he was finished. Murphy will be sorely missed, though, of that there’s no doubt.
Danny’s absence is what really worries me to be honest. He’s our creative player who can thread through balls in behind defences for our forwards to run onto. Much of our attacking play comes through him. Who’s going to step up and do this role? Greening hasn’t really impressed so far, Etuhu’s a holding midfielder like the South African and Roy seems to see Riise as a wide player.