Injury Updates: Salah & Peres

With nine absolutely essential points on the line to kickoff December, Roma is a perfect six for six, downing Lazio and Milan in successive rounds, leaving only a date with the Old Lady of Turin this Saturday. If Roma can manage an upset against the 12 men on the pitch employed by Juventus, then we can start dreaming about the much ballyhooed S word, until then, let’s slow our collective roll and talk about some lower extremities.

Sure, ACLs were in vogue over the summer, but tearing a ligament in your knee is so passe now; all the cool kids in the capital are wrenching their ankles. First it was Mohamed Salah, with a little assist from the handsome but essentially useless Thomas Vermaelen, succumbing to a bout of ankleitis, but he was quickly joined by Bruno Peres, who ironically was filling in for Salah on the right flank.

Welp, as they so often say, when the flying spaghetti monster closes one door, another one opens. First the good news, Salah might...might...be able to suit up against Juve, after finally resuming running in today’s training, roughly 11 days after Vermaelen went Jeff Gillooly on him. So what was originally conceived to be three week absence could be cut in half if Salah continues to progress through the remainder of the week; good news for us, not so much for the Egyptian National Team—ankle injuries tend to linger.

On the bleaker side of things, while Peres avoided fracturing his ankle, he appears set for at least a three week spell on the sidelines, effectively removing him from the equation until 2017 and giving Luciano Spalletti further impetus to utilize a three-man backline on a permanent basis.

We mentioned it casually at the conclusion of our match review, but seriously, lock these guys in a hermetically sealed chamber, we can’t afford another injury.