Sam's 'Long Ball' Game Suffers With Viduka Absent Again!

The Aussie striker is likely to miss out again, with the derby match with Sunderland at the Stadium of Light in 10 days' time a more realistic target.

He is back in training after being sidelined since he limped off with a calf injury two minutes from the end of the 3-1 defeat by Manchester City at Eastlands at the end of last month, but he is not reacting to treatment as was first expected.

Allardyce will be forced to stick with Oba Martins and Michael Owen, but the Toon boss has already tried to avoid putting (what he describes as) two similar players together.

There are alternatives of course.

Alan Smith is probably the closest Big Sam has to a target man, although Smith believes there is more to his game than being a "battering ram".
 
And we hope he doesn't decide to bring in Shola Ameobi, who is not exactly the flavour of the month with the Toon Army.

Will he bring back James Milner and Charles N'Zogbia?
 
They were left on the bench against Reading, and we looked one positively one dimensional without them out wide.

And of course, after going with Sam's four summer signings in the back line, the United boss has to decide whether to bring back either David Rozehnal or Steven Taylor in his defence .