Handbags at Bodymoor: Reo-Coker v O'Neill

I've been a bit out of the loop the last couple of days so this might not be news to anyone but me and if it is sorry it's late, but according to The Sun, Martin O'Neill and Nigel Reo-Coker 'grappled each other to the ground in an amazing training-ground bust-up yesterday'.

Now, first things first, they have a quote. Secondly, you can not write something about Martin O'Neill that isn't true, otherwise he'll sue and every editor in the land knows this, so maybe there is something in it?

It is believed that O'Neill doesn't attend training that often, leaving most of the work to his two assistants most of the week and it is also thought that the Thursday before a Saturday game is one of the days he will oversee things, so we will assume that he was in attendance, but can this really have happened?

A stunned onlooker
It was really heated and at one point they fell to the ground grappling with each other although no one was throwing punches or anything like that.

Okay, it is fair to assume that Reo-Coker might be a little annoyed at basically not getting a regular game in a regular position, but on the other hand it is also fair to assume that Reo-Coker is a professional and going 'toe-to-toe' with the manager, is hardly something that is going to do you any favours.

Passion is something you want to see and you sort of see that Reo-Coker has it and while it would be easy to speculate on why this happened, if in fact it did, I'm going to put this down to every one wanting to play and every one keen as mustard to get it right, nothing more, nothing less.

Naturally, I can't stop the speculation on why this happened and I suspect most will see it as Martin O'Neill announcing he is going back to 4-4-2 for the visit of Portsmouth tomorrow and Reo-Coker disagreed (see what I've done), but we just don't know and a such, until we see the team sheet tomorrow and no Reo-Coker, we have to assume this didn't happen or if it did, it was a joke on Reo-Coker or the manager or someone winding someone up.

Match preview for the Pompey game coming up and well, maybe more from the club on this, they're not going to be able to walk away from it and act as if it never got published in a national newspaper.