Injury returns to plague Ferdinand

RIO FERDINAND’S season has ended as it began after he was ruled out of England’s next two games because of a long-standing knee injury.

It completes a miserable year fitness wise for Britain’s costliest defender, whose career had been relatively injury-free until he completed his £29.3m move from Leeds to Manchester United.

Having travelled back to Manchester for an examination by United club doctor Mike Stone, it was decided Ferdinand should have exploratory surgery to assess the extent of the problem which plagued him for the last two months of the Old Trafford outfit’s title-winning campaign.

Although the length of his absence has yet to be determined, Ferdinand has already been pulled out of Eriksson’s squad for Tuesday’s friendly with Serbia and Montenegro, plus the vital Euro 2004 qualifier with Slovakia at the Riverside Stadium on June 11.

The news completes a bad campaign for Ferdinand, who twisted an ankle in the pre-season friendly with Boca Juniors and has suffered a series of niggling injuries since.

After being forced to sit out the first three games of the season, the 23-year -old Londoner then had surgery on a damaged cartilage in October, which kept him out of the Euro 2004 qualifiers with Slovakia and Macedonia.

Then, after just six games back in the side, he tore a thigh muscle in a Champions League encounter with Bayer Leverkusen at Old Trafford which ruled him out until the Boxing Day defeat at Middlesbrough.

Although he ended the campaign without further setbacks, the early disruption contributed to his lack of consistency and failure to prove he was worth Alex Ferguson’s vast outlay.

United will hope to have Ferdinand back on board for their high-profile four-match tour of the United States at the end of July, but he is the latest member of the Old Trafford squad to have his summer disrupted by injury.

Nicky Butt (knee), Gary Neville (foot), David Beckham (hand) and Wes Brown (cruciate ligaments) are also unavailable for national duty this summer, leaving Sven-Goran Eriksson to scour his squad looking for alternatives.

Birmingham’s star Matthew Upson is almost certain to partner Gareth Southgate in Tuesday’s game, while John Terry will be back in contention for the Slovakia encounter.