Chelsea Football Club

• Nickname:Blues
• Founded:1905
• Manager:Rafael Benitez

• Ground:Stamford Bridge
• Capacity:42440

Blues suffer Bridge blow

14 Mar 2007 - 08:12:19

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Chelsea and England left-back Wayne Bridge will be out for around three weeks after being forced to go in for surgery on a nagging knee injury.

The 26-year-old defender has not featured for the Premiership champions since the 2-0 victory at Portsmouth on March 3.

Blues doctor Bryan English told the club's official website: "He'd been struggling with pain at the back of the knee for about three weeks.

"A scan confirmed that he had a tear in the meniscus, the shock absorber in the joint, but it was a stable tear.

"We thought we may be able to leave it to the end of the season, but it got to the stage where he was struggling to do a flat-out sprint, so we thought it would be best to get it done.

"When we had this operation done on Damien Duff, we had him back and playing in three weeks and we hope that will be the same with Wayne.

"But you always wait for the operation to be done to see what that the prognosis is going to be."