Since his thirty minute substitute appearance at Wigan on the fourth of February £5.5m striker Nikica Jelavic has been out with a groin injury. It is now being reported that he might need an operation to cure the problem; medical name pubalgia - to you and me a hernia.  Groin and hernia problems are very common among footballers and can often be a chronic condition which the player ‘carries’ for months. Duncan Ferguson was plagued by this complaint throughout his career and went under the surgeons knife on more than one occasion. Given their financial problems, which have since caused them to go into administration, Jelavic represented Rangers’ single most marketable asset, but one constrained by...

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EVERTON 2 (Drenthe 1, Stracqualursi 6) – BLACKPOOL 0 Royston Drenthe’s best performance in a blue shirt coincident with the return to fitness of Seamus Coleman means that filling the hole left by Landon Donovan’s departure just got a whole lot easier. Drenthe started on the right wing, and after the arrival of Coleman as a sixtieth minute substitute, finished on the left, but whichever flank he occupied he was a continual threat. Earlier in the season after another spectacular goal, this time at Craven Cottage, the Fulham manager Martin Jol, who has known of Drenthe since he first emerged at the Feyenoord youth system aged thirteen, said “I...

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