Everton are hopeful that the knee injury sustained by Steven Pienaar aginst Portsmouth on Saturday is a short-term blow.

The South African midfielder was stretchered off just before the hour-mark at Fratton Park and was replaced by Russian fantasy prospect, Diniyar Bilyaletdinov. Although Pienaar is currently on crutches, the latest from Everton physio Mick Rathbone, sounds fairly encouraging…

“There’s no timescale at the moment but hopefully it will only be something short term…It looks like it is just bruised but I am hesitating because it is so hard to examine the knee. We have looked at the film to see what happened and how it is today and we are pretty confident it is okay. But it is badly bruised and it’s pretty sore, as you can imagine.”

Pienaar has started the season well, although this hasn’t translated to fantasy returns, with just one assist to his name thus far. We’ll doubtless hear more on the injury as Thursday’s Europa Cup tie with BATE nears. Everton then face Stoke at Goodison at the weekend and at this stage, Pienaar will go into both games as a major doubt…

Bilyaletdinov is presumably set for a full Premier League debut then and with the Russian similarly priced in fantasy terms, some fantasy managers will be considering a straight swap. There’s a heavy threat of rotation in the Everton midfield right now however, which will only be increased by the return of Arteta next month.