Fletcher Out For 2 Months

Things are starting to look gloomy: Fletcher is out for rest of the season.

OK, that is an exaggeration: he is out for 2 months as the ankle injury he had sustained at Reading proved to be far more serious than it had been believed. But 2 months mean he won't return before May so he might play in the last game of the season. Pratically, he's out for this campaign.

'He had lots of swelling. We had to wait before we could do a scan,' Sir Alex said.

'Unfortunately, the news was not good, which is a bad blow for the lad.'

And an even worse blow for United, with Scholes' three-match ban coming up, we are left with O'Shea and Carrick as central midfielders for the games against Boro, Bolton and Blackburn. But that would be alright: after all, we racked up 9 straight wins last year with a midfield pairing of O'Shea and Giggs. But we had strikers that time but now we seem to run out of them.

Louis Saha will not play against Lille as he picked up a knock in training. Fergie admitted they were not 100% sure what is the nature of his injury so he had been sent to a scan. The results will tell whether we'll have to do without him for weeks or it's just a minor injury that will enable him to play against Middlesbrough in the FA Cup. Let's hope for the latter otherwise we'll have serious problems in the final run-in. And I don't want to make pessimistic comparisons with 1992...

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