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Back today to watch the reserves and left behind 1st teamers. No Garrido today and still no Nedum but Benjani was working away 1 to 1 and to be fair looking a little closer to readiness to resume full training. Most notable for me was the missing coaches as Bowen , Niedzvieki and Hitchcock all had the day off! Lazy buggers taking a day off and leaving Hughes to do real hands on coaching with Glyn Hodges.

All the warm ups finished and it was down to 5 a side games and some pretty competitive stuff it was too. Stevie probably the most influential player on the field and some of the goals scored were down to his composure and skill to find angles and space for the killer passes. A number of players got crunched and left in pain. Gunnar Nielsen looked the worst as he collected a cross and seemed to be turned in mid air to land fully on his back. David Ball was scythed down by Silvniho. Stevie took a knock as did Vidal and a few others but the general reaction was " you'll be fine boyo" and the game carried on.

During this session RSC and Vinnie were not on the pitch all the time just rotating for each other and chatting with fitness guys.No issues I could see but just part of the planned session for them. I did note though that whenever the game stopped for a short break and they had a drink Stevie was still out there on the pitch waiting for the game to restart and they had to take drinks out to him. It seems he has to be doing something.

Can't wait for Benjani to come back!

Ireland needs to chill out a bit.

Cheers Mr Doug,
Where is Mr Robinhio,or however you spell it, is he back in sunshine, or what's he up to ?.

john@staustell wrote:Can't wait for Benjani to come back!

Ha ha.. Honestly, what the fuck was it when Hughes said the other day something like "Unfortunately we're still missing the services of Benjani". Now that made me chuckle when I read that!

viking the Odd wrote:Cheers Mr Doug,
Where is Mr Robinhio,or however you spell it, is he back in sunshine, or what's he up to ?.

His rehab is going on indoors at the mo and starts ourtside next week.

john@staustell wrote:Can't wait for Benjani to come back!

Ireland needs to chill out a bit.

Superman needs no break!

How did Johnson look??
And when should we expect Nedum to be back?

Biamp wrote:How did Johnson look??
And when should we expect Nedum to be back?

Didn't get a chance to talk to anyone today.No sign of Nedum yet which is both a disappointment and a surprise.

Johnson is definitely looking trimmer but still way short of a prem start I would say.

Douglas Higginbottom wrote:

Biamp wrote:How did Johnson look??
And when should we expect Nedum to be back?

Didn't get a chance to talk to anyone today.No sign of Nedum yet which is both a disappointment and a surprise.

Johnson is definitely looking trimmer but still way short of a prem start I would say.

The thing with Johnson and other players who have been injured for such a long period of time is that they will pick up niggles and other injuries when coming back to full fitness, so think we have to be patient with him. Same with Santa Cruz - doubt we'll see him anything near what he can before Christmas, just because he's had such a stop-start career in the last 12 months with injuries.

Look at Eduardo - he was out for a year with injury and then towards the back end of last season he was pulling his hamstring etc after such a serious injury the year before at B'ham

Great stuff as per!

Strange innit, it seems Stevie is verging on being like OCD keen to train and play for City, but playing for Eire doesn't stir him at all, no matter who the manager is. And Given's in the papers talking of how proud he is to play for his country, I wonder what they say to each other about it. I suppose their loss is our gain on that front.

Rambling aside, it's also very good to see Benjani is getting near fit. No offence to the lad but we're not gonna be able to sell him if he's perma-crocked.

How do they plan for these international lay offs? How is morale?

uwe's_skyblue_duvet wrote:Great stuff as per!

Strange innit, it seems Stevie is verging on being like OCD keen to train and play for City, but playing for Eire doesn't stir him at all, no matter who the manager is. And Given's in the papers talking of how proud he is to play for his country, I wonder what they say to each other about it. I suppose their loss is our gain on that front.

Rambling aside, it's also very good to see Benjani is getting near fit. No offence to the lad but we're not gonna be able to sell him if he's perma-crocked.

I've been thinking about something similar regarding Benjani. We're now offering insane wages that it's going to be difficult to sell players if we ever felt the need to. Take Adebayor who I believe is on 160k a week, not that we would ever want to sell him right now, but lets say all of a sudden he went shite, he had an injury and never recovered to be the player he was, and started causing turmoil in the dressing room, how on earth could we sell him to someone say like spurs when he's on 160k a week?

edge275 wrote:

uwe's_skyblue_duvet wrote:Great stuff as per!

Strange innit, it seems Stevie is verging on being like OCD keen to train and play for City, but playing for Eire doesn't stir him at all, no matter who the manager is. And Given's in the papers talking of how proud he is to play for his country, I wonder what they say to each other about it. I suppose their loss is our gain on that front.

Rambling aside, it's also very good to see Benjani is getting near fit. No offence to the lad but we're not gonna be able to sell him if he's perma-crocked.

I've been thinking about something similar regarding Benjani. We're now offering insane wages that it's going to be difficult to sell players if we ever felt the need to. Take Adebayor who I believe is on 160k a week, not that we would ever want to sell him right now, but lets say all of a sudden he went shite, he had an injury and never recovered to be the player he was, and started causing turmoil in the dressing room, how on earth could we sell him to someone say like spurs when he's on 160k a week?

We couldn't & probably wouldn't sell quality players to a PL side but presumably if we sold him to for instance Milan, we'd have to cut the transfer fee down substantially so that they could spend that on his wages, or give him a payoff equivalent to it. Don't think the Sheikh will give a shit either way though tbh. Probably spends more than that on bog rolls for his palaces.

If anyone gets a touch of the prima donnas they might find themselves getting loaned out to the Sheikh's Middle Eastern team until the end of their contract..