Wallace season over as ACL jinx strikes again
KIERAN IS SECOND TO SUFFER SERIOUS KNEE INJURY THIS SEASON AND THE FIFTH IN FOUR YEARS FOR THE BREWERS
BURTON Albion’s awful luck with cruciate ligament injuries struck again on Tuesday night, as it has now been confirmed that Kieran Wallace suffered a ruptured ACL to his right knee during the 2-1 win away to Charlton Athletic.
Wallace went down in an innocuous-looking challenge with Andrew Shinnie just inside the Charlton half in the 37th minute and needed treatment.
No foul was committed by either player and play went on.
Wallace attempted to carry on but was replaced within two minutes when he went down again.
“It’s a big setback for us, as Kieran plays the position really well, when we need someone sitting and screening in front of the back four,” said Hasselbaink.
“He will be out around nine months, unfortunately for the kid, but we will assist him.
“He got stuck in the grass with his studs, put weight on his knee and fell awkwardly.
“We thought it was bad after the match but we were hoping. He got the confirmation yesterday (Thursday).
“These are things we can’t control. Kieran’s was a freaky one, there was no contact.”
Wallace has not been lucky with injuries generally during his time with Burton but now faces an extended time out of the game and the usual length of recovery time for injuries like this means that he is unlikely to be ready to join in pre-season training for the 2021-22 campaign.
Remarkably, Wallace’s is the fifth ACL injury suffered by a Burton players since the start of Liam Boyce’s first season with the club in August 2017.
Academy products Ben Fox and Callum Hawkins were both sidelined with similar injuries within a month of each other at the start of the 2019-20 season and, in December, on-loan centrehalf Sam Hughes suffered an ACL injury in the home game against Doncaster Rovers.
The all-too-regular occurrence of such injuries cannot really be attributed to anything other than a run of bad luck.
When a squad suffers a number of injuries, there are always people ready to point a finger at training regimes or pitches.
But the facts of Burton’s five ACL injuries are that they all occurred on different pitches – and under the training schedules of three different managers.
Two of them have happened in pre-season friendlies and a third in training.
Boyce suffered his injury during a pre-season game away to Shrewsbury Town, making a return earlier than expected before the end of the Brewers’ second season in the Championship.
Fox was playing in a pre-season friendly away to Matlock Town, while goalkeeper Hawkins’ injury came during training.
Hughes’ injury was the only one to happen at the Pirelli Stadium, before Wallace suffered his at The Valley on Tuesday night.