FURIOUS Cherries physio John Cooper is threatening to sue an unofficial fans' website after claiming he was libelled on its message board.

Cooper is unhappy with a posting which appeared on the site regarding comments he allegedly made to a fan about the condition of Steve Fletcher's knee.

The message - posted on the Rivals website rednblack.net on Tuesday afternoon - claimed Cooper had told the supporter that Fletcher "could be out for a year" because he has "ruptured his medial ligaments".

But the Cherries physio has strongly denied the fan's claim, and, just minutes after threatening website administrators with legal action, the post was removed yesterday morning.

The message board allows fans to post their opinions on various matters concerning the club, although often they are submitted anonymously.

Cooper said: "I think it's despicable that people can put these things on the website and not be accountable for them.

"There is no way I'm in any position to say Steve Fletcher will be out for the rest of the season because I'm not a consultant surgeon and that's why we are sending him to one to find out the extent of his injury.

"To say he has ruptured his medial ligament is totally wrong, totally inaccurate and totally false.

"It's outrageous that people can get away with this and I'm not happy.

"It's now in the hands of my solicitors and I have also spoken to club officials to make them aware of the situation and they have said they will support me 100 per cent."

The following disclaimer appears on the message board: "We log IP addresses for senders of defamatory or abusive submissions which we may be required to pass to relevant authorities to assist with any proper inquiry.

"Please treat the Rivals message boards and fellow contributors with respect.

"Rivals does its best to police message boards and remove offending submissions. We do not associate ourselves with any of the submissions, nor do we take responsibility for any statements or opinions therein."

A spokesman for rednblack.net said: "The message board is an open discussion forum which anybody may post to. As soon as we were advised there may be a problem, the message was removed, as is our policy."

Cherries captain Fletcher is due to have keyhole surgery to determine the extent of his knee injury in Leeds later today.

The 29-year-old recently returned from an 18-week layoff, but suffered a recurrence of the injury during Cherries' 2-1 defeat at Chesterfield on Saturday.