Ledley King to have knee surgery

Nobody's posted this up yet, so I'll do the dirty deed. From the official site:

Quote :

Ledley King will undergo surgery to his left knee next week.

The captain has a tear to his cartilage that was aggravated while on England duty, the central defender played for the B side against Albania and the full internationals against Brazil and Estonia.

"It's a routine op and it makes sense for Ledley to have it now and use the summer to recover and be back as close to the start of the season as possible," said Martin Jol.

Yep saw that on the bbc website.

Wonder how long he'll be out for this time

For crying out loud, put Danny Murphy at centre back til Ledley's fully recovered.

Bloody nightmare. Hopefully he'll be fit for August, but something tells me he's gonna be out for a lot longer. Urgently need a centre back now. Whatever happened to the French U21 chap we'd "secured" a few weeks ago. It's gone deathly silent on that one

Kaboul. No idea, but they need one and possibly two CBs if Ledders is genuinely fragile.

I am sure there is an urgency to sign another proper centre back ... we cant go through another season where we leak in too many goals especially at set pieces time

GDG wrote:

Kaboul. No idea, but they need one and possibly two CBs if Ledders is genuinely fragile.

Kaboul is a done deal and will be officially announced on July 1st.

I think we have, sadly, seen the best of Ledders. Also don't think Rocha is up to PL standard. Think a priority must be to find a reliable CB to replace Ledley. With Berbatov in the team, scoring goals won't be a problem. The problem is trying to score enough cos we will as sure as hell concede loads.

I hope you're right Ozspur. From what I've heard Kaboul is decent. But I always worry if they'll make the grade in the Premiership. Just look at Rocky "Mudslide" Rocha - he's had a few "teething" problems shall we say and doesn't look like our answer at centre back. I'd also like us to acquire Davies from WBA. If we're gonna make Champions League next season we'll need the following quota of CBs:

King (at best we'll get half a season out of him)
Dawson (future Captain Marvel)
Kaboul (might need a season to find his feet)
Davies (I reckon he'll slip straight in and could be another Daws)
Mudslide Rocha (back up player)
The Inconsistent Gardner (realistically, he'll probably leave as a make weight for Davies)

Any thoughts?

ezza wrote:

King (at best we'll get half a season out of him)
Dawson (future Captain Marvel)
Kaboul (might need a season to find his feet)
Davies (I reckon he'll slip straight in and could be another Daws)
Mudslide Rocha (back up player)
The Inconsistent Gardner (realistically, he'll probably leave as a make weight for Davies)

Any thoughts?

I agree about King. Next season will be the same as this. He's not going to get any stronger :-(

Dawson - a wonderful example. Loyal, committed, not a money-grabbing bastard, and seems to stay injury-free (jeez - I hope that's not jinxed him) Still, needs to improve his reading of the game and not sure the understanding between him and Robbo is all that good. Dawson clearly needs Ledders with him, but I fear that's not going to happen too much. So, we need Curtis Davies, for sure. Gardener has had his chances and is not up to it. Also, he's as injury prone as Ledley. No, we need to get Davies and get rid of Gardener.

Rocha - really not sure about this guy. He's let us down twice in big games. Maybe he's still acclimatising to the pace of the PL but I'm not sure he's the answer to our defensive frailties.

As for Kaboul, he's highly rated but really an unknown entity. Let's hope for the best.


As for the rest, I think we must replace Mido but we really need to keep Defoe. I also have high hopes that Jenas will excel this year. There's a tremendous player there and we are yet to see him play to his full ability. That will depend on the coaching staff. They need to really work on him. Same goes for Lennon, who really went off the boil at the end of last season.

Speaking of CBs, Ben Haim just moved to Chelski on a free.