Guus Hiddink still counting on Radamel Falcao in the Premier League

Death.
Taxes.
Beating Arsenal.
Radamel Falcao injured.

The certainties in life.

"Falcao wants to play but he can't do it yet because he is unable to train. He is currently undergoing treatment. I hope for him to be ready at some point because in the Premier League we need all our strikers. He has had bad luck this season. He was training and suffered a setback. Then he started training again and suffered another setback. It has been an injury with many setbacks and that was not good for him."

-Guus Hiddink; source: DirecTV via London 24

There's bad luck and then there's bad luck.  And then there's whatever cosmic force cursed Radamel Falcao.  The man who's celebrating his 30th birthday today has not played since the end of October.

Combined with Loïc Rémy's frequent, ill-timed injuries and Alexandre Pato's lack of match fitness, we can at least count our lucky stars that Diego Costa has stayed injury free, basically the whole season.  That part is actually rather remarkable, after almost two whole seasons of constant worries about his hamstrings.

In any case, even when (if?) Falcao does recover, I doubt he'll be a useful piece of the puzzle.  (It's not like he was before, at the start of the season.)  Hopefully Pato does eventually come up to speed, especially if we end up cashing in on Rémy before the end of the Chinese transfer window.