After a gloomy start to the season at Crystal Palace, one piece of news shines bright for the 'Eagles'.
Tuesday night sees the return of Papa Souare to the fold at Selhurst Park, one year after being part of a horrific car crash that could have taken his life.
Souare was pulled from under the wreckage on the M4, neat Heathrow, after his legs were trapped underneath the car door until an ait ambulance arrived on the scene.
It was another driver who told him "Stay with me, stay with me" while Souare worried for the worst.
"All I had in Africa growing up was my dream of being a footballer. Only my legs helped me achieve that and, there in the car, I couldn’t move them. I was scared," he admits.
The defender suffered a broken jaw, but more seriously still a broken right thigh bone, crucial in where footballers find the power to play
It was made harder still on the Senegal-born midfielder by not wanting his family to know the full extent of the calamity. His father was already at that point receiving treatment for terminal cancer, and his mother had broken her leg a day before the crash.
Fate transpired to save him in unique circumstances, though. Souare would not have been airlifted had a charity cycle not been taking place that morning, and had the impact hit him a few centimetres higher, it's doubtful he'd be walking.
"It could have broken my spine and I would have been paralysed," Souare says. "I was told I was very lucky."
"I’d heard that no football player had ever had this kind of injury before. It made you think,’ he said.
"Where I had the injury was very sensitive, it took all the muscle. I had to work hard to build it up again and at the beginning there was pain and discomfort. I felt my leg was weak.
"But when I visited my dad and saw how he was, and I just had a broken leg, you can’t give up. You have to show your family and do your best to get back. That stayed in my mind.
"My family didn’t put any pressure on me, it’s the pressure I put on myself. When you are from Africa and want to be a footballer, the only thing you think about is making your family proud and trying to help them financially.
"It’s the only thing I know. I had to do all the hard work even though I didn’t know the end outcome."
Souare, a practising Muslim, says he found comforts in his religious beliefs.
"I thank God to be alive but wish my dad could also be here to see that I recovered," says Souare, ahead of his miraculous comeback.