Midfielder Keith Andrews to sit on the sideline with torn muscle

This time the wheel of fortune has landed on Keith Andrews. The Irishman, recently named FAI player of the year, has been struggling all season with an Achilles injury, and it is safe to say that his current torn muscle is probably related to that. While these estimations are never exact, he looks to miss around 6 weeks. Dougie Freedman told the press,

Keith had been struggling with his Achilles and carrying the injury. I'm guessing, because I don't know about the recovery (timescale), but with the torn thigh we could now be looking at a month or six weeks to get the problem sorted.

While this is just speculation, Andrews' injury could well be an example of the negative effects of painkiller abuse in football (something I wrote about in depth in January). Andrews has been receiving pan-killing injections to relieve the Achilles pain throughout this season. However, the numbing effect of these turns off the body's warning system about other injuries, meaning that Andrews could've played through a smaller injury without realising, continually aggravating the muscle until it tore.

However he injured it, we hope Andrews a speedy recovery, as he's been doing a great job for the midfield this season.