Emerse Faé could be out for two weeks after he contracted malaria. The Reading midfield player was taken ill in Teesside on Friday, a day before the team played Middlesbrough, and blood tests have shown that he has contracted the illness, almost certainly while playing for Ivory Coast in this year's African Cup of Nations. Faé had been taking tablets to prevent infection, which is likely to have been caused by a mosquito bite.

Faé was flown back from Teesside on Saturday and was at the club's training ground on Sunday. “He felt better during Sunday but by that evening he felt worse and he went to hospital, where blood tests showed he had malaria,” Steve Coppell, the Reading manager, said. “He looked terrible when we got up to Middlesbrough. The weather was bad and it was really windy. He was sweating really badly so we just thought it was flu. We're hoping that he won't be out much longer than a week.”

Lomana LuaLua contracted malaria in 2005 when he was playing for Portsmouth. The Olympiacos forward was out for seven weeks. Yakubu Ayegbeni, the Everton forward who was a team-mate of LuaLua, twice contracted a mild strain of malaria during his time at Fratton Park.