Chelsea loanee Izzy Brown suffers setback in bid to recover from ACL injury at Leeds

Leeds United were expecting Izzy Brown to be able to start contributing after the international break, but as revealed by manager Marcelo Bielsa, that’s not going to be the case exactly for the Chelsea loanee as he’s still recovering from injury.

“It’s been a long time since he played, he still needs to recover. He hasn’t started to play with the ball, he hasn’t played football with us so far. It’s impossible to say when he will be fit. It won’t be a short time.”

-Marcelo Bielsa; source: Yorkshire Evening Post

Brown has been out since January with a torn ACL, suffered while on loan at Brighton & Hove Albion, but he had started doing recovery work in the summer and joined Leeds on loan with the expectation to move beyond that into actual training and playing. But ACL injuries are finicky beasts, and setbacks are not uncommon.

Perhaps the more concerning part is that Bielsa wasn’t quite willing to put even a vague timeline on when he might expect Brown to play. That said, it’s been only 9 months since the injury, and that length of time is towards the very front end of the usual recovery window. ACL injuries can drag on for 12, 18, sometimes even 24 months; hopefully Brown can push past this setback and be able to start playing at Leeds soon.