Alcaraz may need surgery

Make that a conservative guess at 3/4 months

Some players are worth the wait to recover (NBA stars like Kobe, Derrick Rose) some are not (Alcaraz, Darron Gibson, Kone). Hate to say it but it's obvious at this point anything we get out them is bonus and we need them off the wage bill and with new cover asap.

Damn unfortunate but he does seem to be jinxed....

It seems to be all too easy nowadays for us to continually criticise a player and give them the tag of "sicknote" when, to me, it seems that some players are just downright unlucky when it comes down to the bones of it.

Manchester United defender Marcos Rojo and Sunderland full-back Patrick van Aanholt also suffered dislocated shoulders in the latest round of Premier League matches.

I'm sure that Alcaraz, Kone and Gibson don't go out of their way to suffer these serious and freak injuries deliberately. Oviedo never got criticised for such a serious set-back.

Can't we just lay off the silly name calling and all agree to what should come down to just plain and simple bad bloody luck?

Put him down, it's the best thing for him.... make some glue.

The Saha deal was good, if I understood it correctly, pay-if-he-plays... Is there some reality to the football-scene that I, as an armchair manager (...), am totally unaware of? Are there any sort of histories about players plagued by injuries at an early age not continuing that trend?

Just wondering, as getting often-crocked players in has always baffled me...

@Gerry Quinn. No we can't.

I feel for him. I played competitive rugby until I separated my left shoulder. That injury put me out for the season. I was 27.

I was all set to go next summer, when in training, I did very serious damage to my right shoulder. (3rd degree separation and partial dislocation). My rugby days were over, as well as my tennis and darts.

The spirit was willing, the body wasn’t.

It's interesting what some people on ToffeeWeb would say if we went back a few years as Ferguson often missed long gaps in the season with bad injuries. I don't think he would get the abuse that the other lads have had.

http://www.physioroom.com/news/english_premier_league/2013_14/injury_analysis.php

Imagine that you have fought all your life to play football at the highest level and your body lets you down – how depressing must that be? I think it is far more important for a sports person to ply their trade week-in, week-out, than to happily accept the salary without kicking a ball in earnest.

In Gibson's case, however, it would appear that he is simply incapable of coping with the physical demands of the game illustrated by his falling foul to one form of ailment or another. Alcaraz would appear to be in the same boat.

Apart from the serious knee injury that Kone seems to be battling with, I am not aware of any consistent inability to cope with the general physical demands of the game... although I may be wrong. I would think that the general record of the likes of Gibson suggest that, rather than it being a case of "bad luck" he is simply not fit for the task of playing such a physical game.

Like any other employer, Everton have the right to dispense with the services of employees who are not capable of doing the job for which, in the case of footballers, they are obscenely paid. (But to do so of course within the terms of contractual law.) The injury sustained by Oviedo and the career long litany that characterises the likes of Gibson's career, I feel, are simply not in the same bracket.

Sorry, Gerry, a professional footballer (especially one who has months off to prepare his body post injury) should not be suffering from something like this for months on end. Time to be a little tougher on our guys.

Completely agree, Oviedo is off the list, same with every other player that gets injured from a contact play. It's the non-contact injuries that happen that constitute a sicknote.

I can remember Duncan Ferguson's continual issues, yet it all boiled down to some kind of problem with his groin.

I am not one to get on a player's back purely because he has a history of injuries. I am sure that, if there was something not quite genuine, then Everton would get rid.

The players want to play and they want to get paid. It's up to us as a team to make smarter choices when handing out 㿊k, 㿔k a week. In a year when we have 4 competitions, I don't see the need to carry excess cargo. We knew what we had in these types and yet they're still here. That's my gripe.

So, by your explanation, this injury to Alcaraz is okay as it was a contact injury? I know he’s had plenty of other non-contact injuries during his time here but, by your own comments given, he should be free from getting stick for dislocating his shoulder – after all, there was contact!

I suffered with reoccurring shoulder dislocations for years due to a torn labrum (which initially occurred while playing footy) until I finally had it surgically repaired. With this problem (dislocations in general), you can try and rehab and hope for the best but generally, once it pops out, the likelihood of it doing so again increases significantly as all the surrounding soft tissue is stretched making the joint increasingly more unstable (especially shoulders).

Depending on the nature of the injury and assuming the club have long-term plans for him, it's likely worthwhile getting it surgically fixed now.