Nikkan Sports today reported that Tatsuya Yamashita and Kazuya Yamamura trained away from the rest of the team due to injury, which implies a possibility they may not be available for this weekend’s game against Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo.

According to the report, Tatsuya Yamashita, who was absent in last week’s Osaka derby too, has suffered from a right thigh injury, while key player Kazuya Yamamura feels something wrong with his ankle.

J.League Regista, an English written website very useful for foreign J.League followers to which I also recently contributed, launched a podcast today. In its first episode, Football Radar’s Sam Robson analyzed Cerezo’s title chase, correctly pointing out that “the only problem they have is they’ve got a quite thin squad.” Yamashita and Yamamura’s injury may make “a quite thin squad” even thinner, although the newspaper actually didn’t talk about their availability this weekend.

As to the team reinforcement, Sports Hochi reported last week that Cerezo Osaka, as well as Sagan Tosu, were chasing former Japan international Chikashi Masuda who recently terminated his contract with Al-Sharjah, but since then no rumors have been reported.