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I think the he was ruled out for there previous matches but they knew he would be ok to play in this one. So thats why it was a ""welcome sight"" to see his first appearance of the season. If you do a google news archive search there is nothing about the injury leading up to the match  whereas there are several results from before . Therefore I think he was not ""a doubt"" leading up to the match. But he clearly had been injured in the previous weeks.   "