Ramires Injury Update: MCL Problem Less Severe Than First Thought

We're finally getting some quotes in about the Ramires injury and they sound like mostly good news. Andre Villas-Boas sounded reasonably positive when he said he that it was 'not so bad' and was unlikely to require an operation, and Ramires was even more upbeat, saying that club doctors have claimed that his ligament was merely 'stretched' rather than torn:

The ball hit my foot with force and twisted my knee. When I fell on the floor I was already feeling a lot of pain and thought it was something really serious. However the doctors looked at it and said the medial ligament in my knee was stretched, but it's not broken.

Tomorrow (Sunday) I will have a more detailed exam to find out what really happened, but I believe and hope it's nothing serious. I was feeling good in the match and unfortunately this accident happened.

-Ramires. Source: SambaFoot.

Less good news is the apparent prognosis of four weeks out, which would correspond to a Grade II Tear on our handy-dandy MCL chart and would mean Ramires missing Swansea, Manchester United and Everton in the league as well as the first leg of the Champions League knockout game against Napoli. However, that's clearly not set in stone, and we won't know just how long Ramires will be out until the results of his scan come back in tomorrow. Based on the quotes, though, we have pretty good reason to hope that he'll be (relatively) ok. Thank goodness for that.