Souttar ruled out for another three months

HEARTS manager Craig Levein admits John Souttar faces being sidelined for a further three months after undergoing a ‘major’ operation in a bid to finally cure a persistent ankle injury. The Scotland defender was initially only expected to be out for up to a fortnight after being forced off just 39 minutes into the new Premiership season in the August 4 defeat to Aberdeen. However, various scans and consultations with some of the leading specialists in the UK failed to throw any light on why Souttar was still continuing to feel pain. It was only when a surgeon opened up the joint during a procedure on Thursday that the true extent of problem was revealed. It is a further blow to a player who has already endured lengthy layoffs with separate Achilles and hip injuries in the last two years. Levein also admitted yesterday that defender Craig Halkett is facing up to 10 weeks out with knee medial ligament damage after the defender hobbled out of last week’s draw at St Mirren. Levein said: “John got an op on Thursday afternoon. “The surgeon has never seen anything like it before and it was very unusual. “The point where his three ligaments are attached to the bone, the sheath that holds them in place is torn and it didn’t show up on scans, CT, ultrasound, x-rays or anything. “The surgeon’s had to reattach the sheath and put the ligaments back in where they should be and then stitch it to the bone, which is quite a major operation.” Levein, whose side host Kilmarnock today, added: “What does it mean and how long is he out for? He’s got a cast on and that’s on for two weeks and he’ll wear a protective boot for four weeks. “There’s six weeks immobile and generally you would have to double that for the time to come back to play. “Again, I’m just plucking a number out of the air because with the surgeon saying he had not done anything like this in the past, then him giving us a timescale is difficult. “This looked so innocuous, he just rolled his ankle and the scan showed grade one damage to his ligament, which is normally 12 to 14 days and we just couldn’t get to the problem of why it kept on swelling up and why he was getting this pain.”