I’m hoping to put on my Sunday best to face the Geordies (From East London and West Essex Guardian Series)

I’m hoping to put on my Sunday best to face the Geordies

10:47am Thursday 20th September 2007 in West Ham By Guardian-series

I INJURED my knee in training on Friday. It was frustrating, because you spend the week preparing for the game on Saturday and then at the last minute you can't play, but the good news is it's not as bad as first thought.

I'm hoping to be fit for the trip to Newcastle on Sunday.

The main thing this week is to be professional, come in early for treatment and work hard to strengthen my knee. If I do that right, then I'll be okay.

Hopefully I could be training with the boys on Friday. If I'm not ready for Sunday, then I should definitely be back for the Arsenal game.

It was hard to sit on the sidelines against Middlesbrough. Every footballer wants to be out there, playing.

But it was a good performance - we got the three points and another cleansheet - that's the main thing.

I thought Carlton Cole really showed what he can do.

I was also very pleased for Dean Ashton. We've seen the hard work that he's put in over the last year or so to see him get his first goal and playing quality football was really nice. On Tuesday, Nobes Mark Noble and I went to visit the Richard House Hospice as part of Premier League's Creating Chances scheme.

It was wonderful to go there and put smiles on the young kids faces.

The work they do is amazing - they provide free care for children with rare and incurable cancers, genetic conditions, or who need major organ transplants, but the atmosphere is so warm and very family orientated.

The whole family can stay there and sick children have the chance to play and be with their brothers and sisters and their parents. Everything was done the way it would be done in a family house.

I take my hat off to the staff who work there. I would struggle to do that, the emotion of it all. So seeing the way they deal with it all was unbelievable.

Family is incredibly important to me. That's why I have decided to donate the money I received for writing my column last season to the family of Lucy Redmill, the West Ham receptionist who died last month.

She left three young children and just reading a letter about her and the kind of mother she was, that made my mind up for me.