When Ilkay Gundogan signed for Manchester City the worry was always that he wouldn’t be able to stay fit. At Borussia Dortmund, Gundogan had repeatedly been troubled by injuries and missed an awful lot of football.
Pep Guardiola will have known he was taking a gamble, but at the price it was a gamble very much worth taking. Despite arriving recovering from a dislocated right knee, Gundogan’s spell at Manchester City has so far been good and he’s shown the class it was undoubted he possesses.
But just as it was easy to start forgetting about the player being frequently injured… Ilkay Gundogan suffered another blow.
As Gundogan went down against Watford on Wednesday it quickly became clear that it wasn’t a trivial issue, and Guardiola made that doubly clear after the match.
Germany’s Sport Bild say, according to their own information, that Gundogan has torn the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee. Sport Bild then go on to say that’s not definitive, despite presenting it as such, and it may well be the swelling is too big now to confirm the initial diagnosis.
If that is confirmed, and the reporting in Germany is very much of the tone that’s likely, then Sport Bild believe he’ll be out for six to eight months.
