Doctor called in after Mr Gyde claims another Victim!

Whilst the season trundles on in search of a game like an old woman looking for tinned peaches in a newly-refurbished Waitrose, lurching from aisle to aisle in search of something that remains seemingly unobtainable and possibly no longer stocked anyway, your Barely scribes sit in the office flicking pencils at each other, picking lint from their navels and occasionally making funny sounds with a plastic ruler, desperate for some drama that'll fill those column inches.

Thankfully Jerry Gyde stepped up to the plate last week with some spectacular and nausea-inducing knee-mangling of the unfortunate Lee Douglas. Despite Douglas' insistence that any contact was incidental in the predictable closing-of-ranks that footballers always practise on such occasions, Jerry Gyde's autobiography "It's easy when you're me" (launched on Saturday) spoke otherwise:

"I saw Douglas going up for the header. Bang! I let him have it, going for him in mid-air with the old stud-rake and then using my elbow on his knee to break the fall. No-one tells me to drop deep and defend." Despite Gyde's ghost-writer claiming it was all a misunderstanding, Jerry himself refused to denounce the paragraph in question, sending booksellers all over Bristol scurrying to the bargain bins to drag the book in question back on to the shelves in anticipation of a media frenzy.

Last night Barely co-manager Jim Fry remained diplomatic: "I'm sure Jerry regrets any contact - and any contact there was was unintentional. These things tend to be a storm in a teacup and the fact Lee has to wear a leg brace for six weeks is really nothing more than a private joke between the two men". Fry's grasp of physiology and humour aside, the press will be waiting in packs for the drama to unfold on Douglas' return. Until that happens, however, the staff writers here will be playing a lot more online Boggle and leaving wet teabags on each others chairs.