Injury expert: Nakamba likely out for ‘months’ as Aston Villa ‘talks’ confirmed
Marvelous Nakamaba could be sidelined for around two months depending on how Aston Villa approach his knee injury
That is the view of injury expert Ben Dinnery, who runs the Premier Injuries site and has a background in medicine and data analysis.
Per the Express and Star on Wednesday (15 December), Steven Gerrard said he planned to have a “serious chat” with Nakamba about the possibility of surgery.
The Villa boss has been without the 27-year-old since the 1-0 defeat to Liverpool last Saturday (11 December).
Nakamba is one of four first-teamers currently in the Villa treatment room, while three more are out with Covid.
And Dinnery predicts that it will still be some months before the Zimbabwean midfielder is back in action.
“The good news is that it’s not as serious as we first thought,” he told Football Insider‘s Adam Williams.
“We could be looking at around two months. But they need to decide how they are going to address these issues.
“There will have been some talks with a specialist now and they will discuss the various options available to them.
“One of those will be conservative non-surgical treatment and the other will be surgical intervention.
“That might indicate that it is a high-grade medial collateral ligament injury. They respond fairly well to conservative treatment because they have good blood flow.
“We don’t know if there was any secondary damage in terms of structural involvement, meniscus and thing like that.“
Nakamba’s injury rules him out of the Africa Cup of Nations at the end of January.
He has featured 14 times across all competitions this season but is yet to register a goal or assist.
In other news, Alan Hutton tips four Aston Villa starlets for first XI promotion after what he’s heard.