Koscielny May Return for Boxing Day Match vs. West Ham

Alvaro Negredo scoring a goal against your team: That's bad. Alvaro Negredo taking out your first-team centerback while scoring said goal: That's even worse. And when Negredo scored last Saturday in Manchester City's 6-3 win over Arsenal, gashing Laurent Koscielny with his cleats in the process, it was pretty awful. In fact, it initially looked like the French national would be out for weeks if not months, since it involved a stretcher and an instant substitution -- and, as we later found out, ten stitches.

Happily, though, the Express is reporting (as is Metro, via L'Equipe) that Koscielny may return to the squad for the Dec. 26 match against West Ham -- if so, he'll remarkably only miss the Chelsea match for something that looked far more dire when it happened. (Warning: Both the Express and Metro links feature the gruesome post-injury knee selfie that Kos took and posted to his Facebook page.)

There's nothing official on the Arsenal site about the injury status yet, but if you've ever wanted to see Poldi, Szcz, and Rosicky dressed up like elves, now's the time.