Solskjaer to miss entire season with knee injury

OLE GUNNAR SOLSKJAER’S career was hanging in the balance last night after it was confirmed the popular Manchester United striker is likely to miss the whole of the season with a knee injury.

It is the second season in succession Solskjaer has been ravaged by the same problem and, apart from puncturing a massive hole in Sir Alex Ferguson’s striking plans for the new campaign, it raises the obvious possibility that Solskjaer will never play again.

The man who famously scored United’s injury-time winner in the 1999 Champions League final against Bayern Munich, is in the final year of his current contract and there was some doubt over whether he would be offered an extension even without yesterday’s sad news.

“Ole underwent an arthroscopy in Gothenburg yesterday,” said a United spokesman. “This unfortunately confirmed persistent damage to the articular cartilage of his right knee.

“He will undergo further treatment, but it is likely that Ole will miss the whole of this season.”

The 31-year-old missed five months of last season after an operation to cure the same problem but returned in February believing his injury nightmare was at an end.

Yet even towards the back end of the campaign there were murmurings that all was not well with the Norwegian, although the speculation was flatly denied by Ferguson, if not by Solskjaer who was strangely non-committal on the issue. When he came on as a second-half substitute in the FA Cup final win over Millwall in May, it seemed Solskjaer’s recovery was virtually complete.

Instead, the man Ferguson had originally earmarked to fill the right-sided midfield slot vacated by David Beckham felt more twinges of pain during pre-season training.

He pulled out of last month’s US tour on the eve of departure and headed for Sweden for further tests, the outcome of which have devastated the United camp.

Solskjaer, a virtual unknown when he joined United from Molde for £1.5 million in 1996, described the time he spent rehabilitating last year as the hardest of his entire career.

It gives Ferguson another headache as he faces up to the start of a new campaign with his squad stretched to breaking point. United will be without nine senior players, including Solskjaer, for Wednesday’s Champions League encounter with Dinamo Bucharest, with Alan Smith and Diego Forlan his only fit forwards.

Ferguson will now desperately hope Ruud van Nistelrooy and Louis Saha do not take any longer than three weeks to recover from their respective hernia and knee injuries.

While the Solskjaer blow means Forlan is set to receive a stay of execution after spending the summer believing he would be leaving Old Trafford, yesterday’s news is only likely to heighten speculation about a bid for Everton’s Wayne Rooney, who himself is out for at least another month with the foot injury he suffered on England duty in the summer. Any offer for Rooney is not likely to be made until January, by which time Ferguson will have a clearer idea over whether Solskjaer is likely to resume his illustrious playing career.

It is certainly the last thing United wanted to hear as they limp to Bucharest for what their manager has described as a “killer” game.