Uh-Oh: Gerrard Out of World Cup Qualifiers

This is not good news. Steven Gerrard is having surgery on a minor groin injury, which will keep him out of the World Cup qualifiers against Andorra (no problem) and Croatia (big problem).

On the bright side, at least we’ll be spared another Gerrard/Lampard midfield combo from Capello, though I’d rather be spared it through Capello making a decision than through Gerrard getting injured. And I’d rather it was Gerrard playing and not Lampard to be honest.

Annoying thing here is that it seems Liverpool have waited for the international break for Gerrard to have the surgery. Because England going to WC2010 isn’t as important as Rafa being able to play his captain. Here’s how Rafa explained the decision to slice Gerrard open now:

“We knew he would be like this, because he has had that problem for a while. He has to do this now, because he has pain and he had it when he went away with national team.

“We knew he had the problem in the first leg and yesterday our doctor talked about this situation. Steven said he would play with pain and afterwards he would have the operation. Today was OK, he kept going because he knows he’s going to the surgeon tomorrow. It’s not very serious. But he has pain, so we needed to do it.”

Easy to be mad with Rafa, but he’s got to look after his own interests I guess.

More infuriating is that it sounds like Gerrard had this pain in his groin for the Czech Republic friendly. And he still played.

Is it me or is that all wrong? Gerrard should never ever have played in that friendly if he wasn’t fully fit. There were plenty of other players who we need to see in an England shirt. And now we lose him for the important game against Croatia. I’ve got a bad feeling about this campaign already.