Rafael Van der Vaart and Christopher Metzelder have both joined the sickbay as the Dutchman has a contracture on his right hamstring muscles, while the German fractured his nose in the final minutes of the clash against Valencia and may have a surgery on Monday.

Luckily, the Christmas break may give them sometime to recover. It would be a pity if they didn't recover for the match against Villarreal because we need both of them.

There hasn't been any news on the other injured players. While Ruud and Diarra are out for the season, De La Red (who isn't actually...

Franz Beckenbauer, Bayern Munich's president, has admitted it would be hard to keep hold of some of his players if Real approached them. 

He said that If Real's interest in Franck Ribery is serious then it will be very difficult for him to force the French international, whose his contract expires in 2011, to stay especially if he himself wishes to leave.

"Ribery only has two years left in his contract and If we receiver a good offer from Real Madrid or Manchester United we would then be in a weak position to negotiate, especially if Ribery wants to leave. We may still insist on a contract extension but if the offer is good enough, you never know what can happen", said the German legend

Personally, I think Ribery is the kind of player we REALLY need at the moment especially after we sold Robinho to Man City. He has the pace, skills and mentality that a player needs to have in order to lead a team like Real Madrid.

His performances with Bayern Munich have been phenomenal and honestly I was surprised when I read Beckenbauer comments because I had thought it would impossible for us to negotiate with the German giants over Ribery. However, as it seems, Calderon only needs to fax them first, get a ticket to Germany and get a deal stuck.

With Ribery on the squad, we won't have to rely only on Robben all the time which is stressful for the Dutchman.

However, there hasn't been any clear interest from Real, but you never know, while everyone was talking about Crespo and Tevez, Real were talking with Huntelaar.