OPINION
Leeds United fans must be prepared for the possibility that Patrick Bamford might not play again this season.
The club’s £7million summer signing – their most expensive for 17 years – has already been publicly ruled out until at least January due to a knee ligament injury sustained on 9 September.
But the signs are the spell on the sidelines for the ex-Middlesbrough and Chelsea striker could be far longer.
It is telling, and a measure of the seriousness of such an injury, that Bamfords’ Leeds teammate Yosuke Ideguchi is not expected to feature again in 2018-19 after suffering an almost identical injury.
The Yorkshire Evening Post claim Ideguchi’s German loan club Greuther Furth have “no expectation of of seeing him again this season” after he broke down at the start of this month with a posterior cruciate ligament injury.
It is said Leeds have not given an official timescale on the 22-year-old’s return but he is on crutches and sent for extensive rehabilitation which has wrecked his season.
Given that Bamford is recovering from the same injury (Sky Sports), sustained just over three weeks earlier, there must be concern from within the club about whether Marcelo Bielsa will be able to select him again this season.
While a ruptured posterior cruciate ligament might not be quite as serious as a torn anterior cruciate ligament, which typically sidelines players for nine to 12 months, hopes of a January return for the summer recruit appear ludicrously optimistic.