Oulare out for whole season

Last updated : 21 January 2002 By Rob Stanway
Souleymane Oulare had only played 90 minutes of reserve football and scored one goal before he starting complaining of a chest pain. This was ignored as Stoke were as exited as he was for Oulare to play first team football. He played 30 minutes of the match at Northampton.

Next thing we knew the poor guy was in hospital. It was totally unknown what could have been causing his pain and when in the hospital in that couple of days, doctors at a point, were fearful for his life.

It is only now that we have discovered Souleymane Oulare's problem. Test showed that Souleymane had a blood-clot in his lung. This is thought to be linked with all the flying that he had been doing recently. It is also a high possibility that the clot started in his leg and made its way up to his lung.

DVT, or Deep Vien Thrombosis like the oatcake editor Smudge says has been recently pushed alot in the media.

John Rudge told the official site: “He is on clot-busting drugs and that means contact sports are out of the question.

“He will not play for us this season. It is a blow for him and for us because he was looking forward to the challenge of playing in England and helping us get promotion.

“We knew we had signed a prolific goalscorer who would have had a big impact on the rest of our season and it is a great loss for us.

“He was getting stronger and stronger in training and was not far away from first-team fitness.”

Rudge also added: “He has been overwhelmed by this show of support from people and wants me to pass on his thanks to everyone.”