Injuries and Suspensions

Another busy day at the office so here is a quick look at the injuries and suspensions that may impact your line-up choices and some notes on what you may want to do about them. If you want to look at a consolidated list of all team news, you can do that here.

Norwich City vs. Chelsea - Lots of line-up questions for Chelsea as Gary Cahill arrives and Ivanovic and Essien return from injuries. At question are the places of Jose Bosingwa, Jon Obi Mikel, and Oriel Romeu. Even if any of the previous group does start, they are all now much less likely to play the full 90 as there is stronger cover.

Everton vs. Blackburn Rovers - The biggest news (and good news for Everton defenders and Tim Howard) is that Yakubu is serving the first match of his three match suspension. On the other side, it looks likely that Shane Duffy will start again but as we pointed out yesterday, Yahoo doesn't have him in the system (do we call him this season's Sessegnon?) so he's not a cheap option for you.

Fulham vs. Newcastle - Fulham will be missing Moussa Dembele and Orlando Sa due to injuries meaning that Andrew Johnson, Clint Dempsey, Bryan Ruiz, and Bobby Zamora are pretty much guaranteed to fill the attacking spots (nice to have that sort of certainty). For Newcastle, Yohan Cabaye faces a late fitness test which may also decide the fate of Hatem Ben Arfa.

Queens Park Rangers vs. Wigan - The only real news here outside of the missing ACN players (Adel Taarabt and Armande Traore for QPR and Mohamed Diame for Wigan) is that Joey Barton is back from suspension to give the QPR attack some of the spark it seemed to be missing without either Barton or Taarabt last weekend.

Stoke vs. West Brom - Only two items of note for me: 1) Jeremy's favorite midfielder-listed-as-a-defender Ryan Shotton is uncertain - tread carefully; and 2) Graham Dorrans and George Thorne are competing for Chris Brunt's spot while he is injured. Friend of the blog Chris Jones went in on Dorrans last weekend and lost out as he didn't feature - be warned.

Sunderland vs. Swansea City - For Sunderland Titus Bramble and Wes Brown "could" be back - no guarantees but for those (like me) holding Brown for peanuts, it appears he'll be back this weekend or next. The questions at Swansea are whether new blog crush Gylfi Sigurdsson will start (how can he not after last weekend?) and what role Josh McEachran will play now that his loan has been completed (you have to assume he'll start on the bench).

Wolverhampton vs. Aston Villa - Nothing terribly interesting to report here unless you're excited about Robbie Keane as a fantasy option (and you shouldn't be because he wasn't even a good fantasy option in MLS this past summer).

Bolton vs. Liverpool - Probably the only note here is that Daniel Agger is likely to be back in the line-up hard to know what that means for the line-up status of Sebastian Coates. The reports indicate that Jamie Carragher is the one likely to give way but hard to see Liverpool going with such a defensive posture against Bolton which likely means Coates makes way for a more attacking player.

Manchester City vs. Tottenham - Mario Balotelli and Micah Richards are both back which means that the City forward line is in question. I'd GUESS that Balotelli and Sergio Aguero will start but Kun may also be in need of a rest as he's started a lot of matches in a row at this point. Richards means that Zab will likely find his way back to being one of the most versatile and effective bench players in the Premier League. Kompany is still suspended and Kolo and Yaya Toure are both still gone at the ACN. For Spurs, Jermaine Defoe will likely play at forward with Rafael van der Vaart as Emmanuel Adebayor is ineligible to play against City. Defoe is actually decent value if you believe City are significantly weakened at the back without Kompany.

Arsenal vs. Manchester United - Bad news for the Gooners as Mikel Arteta, Thomas Vermaelen, and even TH12 are looking doubtful-at-best due to strained calves (apparently there's something going around at the Emirates). At the same time United's defense is gaining health with Chris Smalling and Phil Jones back after minor injuries. All of this says to me that United should be pretty clear favorites even on the road against a traditionally good team. And no, it gives me no joy to write that last sentence. No word on Danny Welbeck or Rio Ferdinand so I'm assuming both will be in the squad.

Good luck with your team selections and we'll see you tomorrow during the matches for our usual live chat.