Waiting for news on Martin Laursen

The silence surrounding Martin Laursen's latest injury has been defeaning. Not just here in England but also in Laursen's homeland.

For perhaps the first time in Laursen's footballing career the 31-year-old is refusing to divulge any information to a number of Danish journalists who insist they have been close to him for a number of years and have never known anything like this before.

These include people who spent time at his Birmingham home conducting interviews just a couple of months ago when he retired from the Danish national team.

Laursen has always stuck by them.

So what can we glean from this?

Clearly Laursen is facing a potentially life-changing decision.

Rumours of his retirement have been circulating through the walls of Villa Park for the past fortnight.

So far Martin O'Neill has said little, other than revealing that the player was "struggling" and that Laursen was returning home before a meeting that was to take place yesterday (Monday).

Not surprisingly those Danish journalists are again being given a polite "there is no news" message from Laursen today, other than to admit the meeting took place.

A source has suggested to me last week that Laursen has been given until this Friday to make a decision - either to walk away from a game that he has graced to magnificently for over a decade, or to put pen-to-paper on some kind of new pay-as-you-play deal for next season that will allow him to sit out training, rather like Paul McGrath did in the 1990s.

Such an agreement would appear to make superb sense. But not if his long-term fitness was in doubt.

Some years ago I was reasonably close to Laursen. It was at this time that I remember reading an interview in the Denmark press where he described quite openly a lack of cartilage in both knees and his sometime difficulty in doing the simplest of tasks like walking down stairs.

I remember speaking to him throughout his 12 month sabatical in Bologna as he recuperated from career-saving surgery in the United States.

I remember on at least one occasion calling him to make sure he rejected a morning newspaper story that his career was in doubt.

Meanwhile Curtis Davies has become the first player to openly mention the R word and Laursen in the same sentence. I love Davies' honesty but I'm no sure it will have gone down too well with the manager.

As for Laursen, he will go down as one of the best defenders the club has seen over the last couple of decades.

His partnership with Olof Mellberg under David O'Leary's management was particularly fruitful.

But it was last season where he more than doubled his Premier League appearances where he gave by far his best service. A new two and a half year contract in January 2008 looked superb business for club and player.

Had he stayed fit beyond Christmas this year then there is little doubt Arsenal could have been shut out of the race for fourth.

But those injury problems that blighted his initial years at Villa were set to return.

28 games in his first three seasons was hardly good enough.

89 starts in five seasons in still way short of anything the player or supporters might have hoped for.

Whatever the next few days bring we must all wish him well.

He has been good for Villa... and clearly Villa have been terrific in years gone by in standing by him.

His loss, if that's the way it eventually goes, will be huge.

How much would you pay on the open market for a player of his ability? Even at the age of 31 Villa would have got their £3 million back. And then some.