Speculation continues to run wild on the extent of the hamstring injury suffered by Cesc Fabregas in yesterday’s 27 minute appearance against Villa. The Arsenal skipper exploded from the bench to win the game, almost single-handed, scoring two goals in the 3-0 win. However, he later limped off having suffered what appeared to be a recurrence of the hamstring injury that had kept him out of the win over Hull.
Fabregas will now undergo a scan with results expected to arrive tomorrow, prior to Arsenal’s first fixture of the gameweek, the trip to Fratton Park on Wednesday. Wenger hopes that his skipper was simply feeling the effects of scar tissue left by the original injury. If that is the case, it’s thought that Fabregas has a chance of facing Portsmouth. The more pessimistic view, already being reported by some sources as fact, is that Fabregas faces at least three weeks on the sidelines and will miss both the Premier League fixtures in gameweek 20, plus the fixtures against Everton and Bolton that follow…
Right now Fabregas owners can only sit and wait on the news from tomorrow’s scan and hope that Fabregas pulls through for at least the second fixture in the gameweek, the home game against Bolton on January 6th. If not, there will be many managers looking to their bench with the auto-sub kicking in.
Despite the injury scare, we’ve seen Fantasy Premier League investment in Fabregas off the back of his Villa points haul; that followed two gameweeks where over 350,000 managers had cleared him from their squad. Tomorrow, we’ll find out just how the trend will continue. Should he be sidelined beyond this gameweek, we’re likely to see huge sales with interest in Gerrard and Lampard inevitably set to increase as a result.