Oxford United’s highly-promising young midfielder Shandon Baptiste will be out of action for a considerable time after a scan confirmed a rupture of his Anterior Cruciate Ligament.
Shandon sustained the injury shortly after coming on as a substitute at Brentford in the FA Cup on Saturday- his first appearance after recovering from a shoulder injury. He left Griffin Park on crutches and then went for a scan yesterday, having allowed the swelling to go down a little for 48 hours to help with the scan.
The rupture was confirmed and he will now see a specialist this week to advise on the next step to help with his recovery and to give a better timescale of how long he is likely to be out for. However a conservative estimate would see him return to training in eight to ten months, as Karl Robinson explains:
“There is so much work being done to help with recovery from this sort of injury so it’s really hard to predict a timescale, but whichever way you look at it Shandon didn’t deserve this. He has gone from breaking into the team, captaining us against Manchester City, and then to missing the rest of the season.
"It was nobody’s fault, just bad luck, but he is a strong boy, he is really positive and we think the world of him. We will work with him to get him back out there playing as quickly as we can.”