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Lisandro Martinez will be unavailable until April due to a knee injury he suffered during Manchester United’s 3-0 victory against West Ham on Sunday.
However, the issue with the medial collateral ligament was not as severe as initially thought by United’s manager Erik ten Hag. He had referred to it as a “personal disaster” for the Argentine defender and expressed concern that it would be a major injury.
However, despite not needing surgery at the moment, the World Cup champion will be out of action for at least eight weeks and will miss a minimum of seven games. This includes Sunday’s match against Aston Villa and the Manchester derby in March. He will also be absent for United’s FA Cup fifth-round match and a possible quarter-final. There is a possibility that he may not recover in time for the matches against Chelsea and Liverpool in early April.
This indicates that Martinez’s season will be interrupted by two long periods of being unable to play. The West Ham game marked his return after a four month absence due to foot surgery.
At the beginning of the campaign, he was not in his top physical condition and only played in six matches. Since sustaining an injury in the Europa League match against Sevilla last April, he has only been on the field for a total of 741 minutes for Manchester United.
The match on Sunday marked the first time since August that Ten Hag had all four of last season’s center-backs – Martinez, Raphael Varane, Victor Lindelof, and Harry Maguire – able to play. Martinez and Varane, who were the main pair at the time, have not started a game together at Old Trafford since August.
Source: independent.co.uk
