In just under a week, Leeds United’s midfield has taken a hit with injuries to Ethan Ampadu and Ilia Gruev. Moreover, the Bulgarian midfielder will join his teammate and be out for a while.
Ampadu is unlikely to play for the rest of this year, and reports indicate he may return in early 2025 after suffering a knee injury in last weekend’s match against Coventry City. The bad news kept coming, as Gruev also sustained a knee injury in the following game.
Leeds likely wanted to rely on a Gruev-Tanaka partnership to help offset Ampadu’s absence, making this a significant setback for the team. Nonetheless, the news on Gruev might be worse than many had thought.
How long will Ilia Gruev be out for Leeds?
The Yorkshire Evening Post’s Joe Donnohue provided an update on Gruev’s injury and noted that the player won’t be out for weeks but months.
“Ilia Gruev will miss months rather than weeks and undergo surgery on his meniscus after sustaining a ‘significant’ knee injury in the draw at Norwich,” Donnohue wrote Thursday on X. “[A] Considerable blow for #LUFC to lose both defensive midfielders for the long-term in consecutive weeks.”
🚨 Ilia Gruev will miss months rather than weeks and undergo surgery on his meniscus after sustaining a ‘significant’ knee injury in the draw at Norwich. Considerable blow for #LUFC to lose both defensive midfielders for the long-term in consecutive weeks. pic.twitter.com/72rMCqwxXH
— Joe Donnohue (@JoeDonnohue) October 3, 2024
Leeds United have been encouraged to look for midfielders as injuries this week have left the position looking thin. However, manager Daniel Farke recently indicated that they may not be planning to do so. He shared their perspective on potentially signing a free agent to bolster the midfield and explained what would need to occur for the club to bring in an unattached player.
“If I’m honest, I’m not a big believer in doing signings in October, but let’s see,” Farke said. “So first of all, we wait a little bit and hope for a positive outcome from the scan of Ilia and if there’s really a shocking diagnosis and he is out for months, then of course, we have a look on it, but I can’t confirm that we would do then something so then everything would come together – otherwise just a waste of money and a waste of energy.”
Leeds appears to be in a tough spot with their midfield depth, and they might need to explore the free-agent market for solutions.
