Callum Hawkins is out for the majority of the season after Burton Albion suffered a second ACL injury in a month.
The 19-year-old goalkeeper suffered the ligament damage in a training session on Monday, and he will now join fellow academy graduate Ben Fox in facing around seven months on the sidelines.
Fox – who has since had successful surgery on the problem – ruptured his ACL in a pre-season draw at Matlock Town in July.
Hawkins was set to be Albion’s third-choice keeper in 2019-20, behind Manchester United loanee Kieran O’Hara and Stephen Bywater, meaning Jack Livesey will now step into that role.
“Callum inadvertently got injured on Monday morning in training, and he’s done the same as Ben Fox,” said Nigel Clough.
“It’s a massive blow for him and for us. He’s our third-choice keeper.
“It was an innocuous as anything again – he was just playing a ball and his foot got stuck in the grass, and he’s ended up now being out for the next seven months.
“It’s bad news, first of all for the lad, and then to say we’ve got 20 or 21 players, and to have 10 per cent of those do their ACLs, within four weeks – and it’s two young players as well.
“It’s such bad luck for them. There’s never a good time, but there are better times to do it.
“If you do them around Christmas or just before, you’ve had three or four months of the season, and then you’ve got a start date of pre-season for when you’re aiming to get back.
“But to miss pretty much the whole season, you’ll just get back for a month, then you break up again and then come back again for pre-season, it’s poor timing.
“It’s this time of year they do them, because it’s the pitches as well. The pitches are lush and they are holding on to players’ studs, and that’s why I think we are getting so many of them these days, as opposed to what we used to in the old days, when there wasn’t so much grass and the pitches weren’t as good as they are now.”
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