It's knee laughing matter

Guess what? With just 70 minutes of reserve team football under his belt for us, Davide Santon is already busy acquainting himself with the treatment room. The injury, sustained in training, is a particular worry because it's one he's had twice before. It would be just our luck to have eagerly bought up damaged goods - but here's to a swift recovery for the lad. One consequence of the development, of course, is that Ryan Taylor can continue to cling to the left-back spot, despite giving a new definition of hapless against Shaun Wright-Phillips on Monday night.

We're not the only ones having trouble with summer signings, though - Swansea have been denied international clearance for both Darnel Situ and Rafik Halliche. The former came close to signing for us, even scoring twice while on trial, but we couldn't agree terms - it remains to be seen whether we'll be back in for the Frenchman in January, should he still be available.

Meanwhile, long-term transfer target Modibo Maiga has been banished to the reserves by angry Sochaux chairman Alexandre Lacombe until he's "ready to be serious and reliable". With the relationship between club hierarchy and player clearly having broken down, it's remarkable that we weren't able to conclude a deal for a player desperate to join us before the transfer window closed.

And speaking of relationships between chairmen and players souring, the deal that took ASBO to QPR has been back in the spotlight this week amid allegations of a dubious and substantial sum being paid to Willy McKay. It baffles me how someone can claim to be a player's agent and yet then act for the buying club rather than the player when a transfer is negotiated. We might not have heard the last of this.