Leicester City of England midfielder, Wilfred Onyinyen Ndidi faces at least 12 weeks out with the injury he copped last weekend, as The Foxes’ coach, Brendan Rodgers confirmed that the Super Eagles’ star could go in for surgery before this weekend, megasportsarena.com reports.
In throwing more light on the complaint that has already seen Ndidi pull out of the Eagles’ friendly matches against Cote d’Ivoire and Tunisia next month in Austria, Rodgers revealed that the holding midfielder-cum-central defender copped an abductor injury in Sunday’s win over Burnley in the English Premier League and was absent from the team that lost to Arsenal in the Carabao Cup.
While Ndidi missed Wednesday’s game, his compatriot, Kelechi Iheanacho started the match and came close to scoring, but Christian Fuchs’ own goal and Eddie Nketiah’s late effort gave Arsenal a 2-0 win over Leicester at King Power Stadium and set up possible cash for The Gunners against Liverpool in the next round.
With Arsenal’s Nigerian-born left-back-cum-winger, Bukayo Saka again in top form, The Gunners pulled off a stunning result that maintains their strong start to the season, where they have won two straight games in remarkable fashion so far in the EPL, and secured a possible trip to Anfield to face Liverpool if The Reds beat Lincoln City on Thursday.
While Ndidi was not available due to injury, Rodgers made 11 changes to his starting roll call that beat Burnley last weekend, but his side still started brightly with Marc Albrighton doing brilliantly to carve out the game’s first chance.
Bernd Leno, who Arsenal’s coach, Mikel Arteta preferred to new arrival, Alex Runarsson, came off his line to save well from Iheanacho at point-blank range after the former Manchester City youngster had been put clean through.
Arsenal were soon into their stride, however, and created a string of openings at the other end with Reiss Nelson, looking to impress Arteta, firing off a series of long-range efforts, but Nelson should have done better on the half-hour mark when his shot drifted wide of the post, while Arsenal also wanted a penalty just before that when Saka went down.
Saka, playing on the left, was the stand-out player and Arteta was screaming for the referee to point to the spot only for him to see nothing wrong with Daniel Amartey’s pressure, and the decision looked likely to prove costly for Arsenal when James Maddison, making his first start since June, curled a delightful shot beyond Leno only to see it cannon back off the post.
Arsenal came close to doubling their lead when Nketiah lobbed the ball over Ward only for the backtracking Leicester captain, Wes Morgan to clear the ball off the line, after which Rodgers introduced Ayoze Perez in the hope of salvaging the tie and the ploy nearly worked when he had a clear header from Albrighton’s free-kick. Instead, he put it wide of the post.
That was to be Leicester’s final chance of the match, their hopes ending when sub Hector Bellerin skipped past a couple of challenges and crossed for Nketiah to force the ball home from close range in stoppage time; but last season’s semi-finalists depart the competition, while Arsenal’s hopes of yet another trip to Wembley go on.
Speaking after the match, Rodgers confirmed that Ndidi, who has been operating as a makeshift central defender for The Foxes so far this season in the English Premier League, may be out for a long while to come because the former Racing Genk of Belgium star would require surgery.
“We are just waiting to hear more on that, but he could be anything between six and 12 weeks. It is an abductor injury – it may have come off the bone which could be a nasty injury, so we will wait to see if needs an operation – it does then it will be 12 weeks,” Rodgers concluded.
