Erling Haaland could miss the remaining of the Premier League season if the Manchester City star’s injury is as bad as initially feared.
After missing a first-half penalty, Haaland equalised for City within the FA Cup quarter-final clash against Bournemouth on Sunday afternoon.
Minutes after the goal, the striker was left needing treatment after hurting his ankle in a tangle with Lewis Cook before landing heavily next to the promoting boards across the pitch.
After being attended to by City’s medical staff, the Norway international tried to play on but was in an excessive amount of discomfort to proceed. He was replaced on the hour mark by Omar Marmoush who went onto rating the winning goal to send his side through to the semi-finals.
Haaland was later seen leaving the Vitality Stadium on crutches, wearing a protective boot. City are back in motion on Wednesday night against Leicester City before visiting Manchester United on Sunday.
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City released a press release on Monday night confirming their striker will now ‘seek specialist consultation’ to verify the total extent of the injury.
The statement added: ‘Assessment stays ongoing to determine a full prognosis. The expectation is that Erling will likely be slot in time to play an additional part in the rest of this season, including this summer’s FIFA Club World Cup.’
Stephen Smith, CEO and founding father of Kitman Labs which specialises in injury welfare and performance analytics working with the Premier League, believes there are three possible scenarios facing Haaland and City.
While Haaland on crutches wearing a protective boot was a precautionary measure any club would take whatever the severity of the problem, a worst case scenario could see him ruled out for 4 to 12 weeks – potentially ending his season.
‘There are probably two or three different potential scenarios starting from relatively innocuous to a little bit more serious,’ Smith told Metro.
‘It looks like his foot was planted and almost squashed together so you may have a little bit little bit of capsular irritation or soft tissue irritation from bruising contained in the joint from it being pushed and squeezed so tightly together.
‘Something like that is comparatively small and perhaps you possibly can be back up and running in a few days. Nevertheless it may be a deltoid ligament sprain which is ligaments on the within your ankle fairly than the surface of your ankle.
‘What you normally see is guys rolling their ankle. Deltoid ligaments are on the alternative side of your ankle. Something like that could possibly be two to 4 weeks.
‘Essentially the most severe is something you don’t often see in football but could possibly be highly possible here’s what is named syndesmosis sprain or what is usually called a high ankle sprain.
‘The syndesmosis ligament wraps around your ankle and type of binds all of it together and keeping the joint held together. It’s a very difficult injury because each time you weight bear and your lower leg pushes into your ankle it squeezes apart. When you’ve damaged that ligament is starts to open that up and splay it.
‘It’s a more traditional injury to get in rugby or American football and it comes from getting your foot squashed like that in a tackle and having your foot and ankle almost pushed back up into that joint and separates it.
‘It looked very just like how something like that might occur and if that’s the case, depending on how bad the sprain is you may be anything from 4 to almost 12 weeks.’
On concerns over Haaland needing crutches, Smith added: ‘Any of those scenarios, good or bad, that’s the approach they may take to try to keep the swelling down and keep weight off it.
‘They won’t even have the ability to diagnose it at this point, he might have to go off for a scan and have it checked out again because in any of those scenarios there may be more likely to be swelling and inflammation which makes it hard to diagnose it immediately.’
Haaland has scored 30 goals in 40 appearances this season, 21 of those coming within the league.
City are still scrapping for a top 4 finish and can meet Nottingham Forest within the FA Cup semi-finals on the weekend of 26 and 27 April.
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