There will be a lot of Hull City fans clicking the 'refresh' button on their computers this week after visiting the club website, desperately awaiting news of Jimmy Bullard's latest setback.
Bullard was carried from the Villa Park field in tears, claiming in rather industrial language that his knee had gone. Phil Brown understandably looked for a positive spin on the wretched situation by revealing that it was not the same knee that rendered Bullard a spectator in orthopaedic strapping for much of 2009. Even though Bullard has suffered career-threatening injuries to each knee during his career. it is this piece of news that the Tiger Nation will cling to until the medical report is revealed.
Bullard knows his body better than anybody and has experience of what bad knee injuries look and feel like and so his maudlin diagnosis before he'd even been helped from the Aston Villa pitch should be observed with respect. But similarly, immense pain and bruising can also turn out to be superficial, as anyone who has suffered a sporting injury will know. Absolute, definite broken ankles can turn out to be sprains and the two months off work becomes one solitary day.
This isn't designed to trivialise Bullard's plight. Heaven knows we feel for him, but we also feel for ourselves. He has been a beacon of hope over the last month when previously there wasn't one and now the team that struggled and panted its way to the point where even a self-regarding chairman knew the game was up and walked out is threatening to be returned to square one. But until we know real facts about Bullard's injury, we have to maintain perspective, some optimism and a sense of humour.
Maybe he'll be out for a month which, given that City play Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea in that time, might not be a bad thing, especially as the other two Premier League games of that period, against Blackburn Rovers and Bolton Wanderers, are winnable without him. A longer recess for Bullard and we have to start relying on lesser individuals with big hearts but restricted gifts to raise their game on a regular level, rather than accept secondary roles in Bullard's showcases.
There remains talent in the squad, even if Bullard is not there to help them flower and look the part. Players like Stephen Hunt, Bernard Mendy, Craig Fagan, Kamel Ghilas and, of course, Geovanni, are all players who can collect priceless points with one act of brilliance that they were always capable of executing even without Bullard there to inspire them or feed them.
Until we know the truth, we can only speculate and try to come up with all the hypotheticals that such a crucial, immeasurable player produces when he is suddenly removed from the equation. We're used to life without Bullard and we survived, but life without him again now that we've seen the other side would, frankly, be agonising. However, our agony will be negligible compared to the physical and emotional agony that the player himself will feel if he sees another chunk of an attractive career disappearing into a swathe of physio's tables and scalpels again. We have to hope that doesn't happen and, if it does, accept it and look for a way to get through it.
You know when they say that no player is bigger than the football club he plays for? Well, we know someone who runs that adage quite close.
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