Much like Sir Alex Ferguson and his fellow Premier League managers, many PlayTheGame players are already facing a crisis as injuries and suspensions begin to wreak havoc with their squads. Indeed our pre-season top ten of Frank Lampard, Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Ricardo Carvalho, Dimitar Berbatov, Didier Drogba, Cesc Fabregas, Kolo Toure, John Terry and John Arne Riise is already out-of-date with a gimpy groin, brittle bone and poor temperament all taking lumps of value out of our predictions.
PlayTheGame is still open for registration (and is still free) so the challenge for those just now preparing for their player allocation is to consider the latest news, weigh its significance and adjust the player ranking that the game uses to name squads unique to every league.
Berbatov's injury has yet to be assessed but we know that Rooney will miss about two months. Depending on each individual manager's strategy, that should knock him down several dozen spots. Likewise, Ronaldo's three-game suspension probably also eases the Portuguese out of the top ten. That opens the door for one of Rio Ferdinand, Michael Dawson, Jamie Carragher or even Andriy Shevchenko to step up and take their places.
With Spurs off to a shocking start and United far from their impressive best adding less than impressive totals to the points categories, we are left with Carragher and Shevchenko as the possible replacements. Regardless of yesterday's result neither offers what all PlayTheGame managers want: a sure thing. In fact the more one ponders the problem, the less certain the answer becomes. For instance, both Drogba and Toure will miss significant amounts of time during the African Cup of Nations...
