The Toure Protocol

Groin injuries. If there is a phrase to make any man's blood run cold, it is Groin Injuries. Picture in your mind that bad guy on Home Alone catching a swinging paint can with his nuts. The blokes from Jackass routinely having their sacks take a beating, for no reason beyond a laugh and millions of dollars. Now, Kolo Toure has damaged his groin during the League Cup match with Notts County.

This poses a couple of immediate questions. What does this mean for Liverpool's defence? Should I transfer Toure out post-haste?

Lets start with the obvious: nothing has been confirmed yet, and Toure hasn't yet had the injury assessed. The initial news coming back isn't good: groin injuries can be nagging, and Toure had to be stretchered off the field. A Tweet from pitchside commentator Peter McDowall, after hearing directly from the L'Pool manager: ""Toure isn't looking so good" according to Brendan Rodgers." So, the news doesnt sound great. The Premier League website has him as 50% chance for this weeks game, but potentially this kind of injury could have him out for upto 8 weeks in the worst case. And if he is out for a substantial number of games, players will hear SELL SELL SELL and his price may plummet.

But before you take any crazy knee-jerk actions, lets take a deep breath and consider the following:

- When a player is injured, he gets a form of price protection, meaning two and half times more people need to sell him for a price drop to occur than if he was not injured. Further, Toure was already 60% of the way towards a price rise. So that many managers would need to sell him AS WELL AS the additional 2.5x managers get rid of him. All this means his price will likely not drop for the next week or so.

- There is the international break coming up, meaning there is only one game between now and September 14. So that is a solid three weeks to recover from his injury without missing many games at all.

- Information on the expected duration of his injury is yet to come. Until that is received, it is probably not wise to ditch Toure, particularly if it will cost you extra points to do so. 

Excellent, so that's sorted then: hold Toure until we hear further news. I'm glad we both agree.

Time for a wider question - what this means for Liverpool? Particularly with a visit this week from Man Utd?

The loss of Toure this week is expected to be a big problem for the Pool. There's effectively no cover in the squad for Toure's loss — Rodgers doesn't rate Skrtel, wants to loan out Andre Wisdom, Seb Coates is slow and injured, and for all we know Barça will make an offer we can't refuse for Agger at the eleventh hour. Toure was absolutely immense first two matches, and if they can keep Man Utd scoreless for a second week they could be doing very well indeed.

However, while I am not certain about Liverpool defensively now that Kolo Toure has The Knack, the betting agencies arent letting his injury sway their opinions of Liverpool too much. Ladbrokes have Man Utd at 7/2 to win with a clean sheet, and Liverpool at 17/4. Not much in it then. 

But while the bookies might not think much of Toure's absence, I definitely rate him. Don't sell him just yet, wait and see what the news is before any rash decisions are made.