Gaetano Berardi 'avoided season-ending surgery' in bid to rejoin Leeds United's Championship promotion bid

Rob Price, who leads United’s medical team at Thorp Arch, said a badly torn hamstring suffered in October left Berardi at risk of up to nine months out as Leeds contemplated whether to send him for an operation.

The former Sampdoria player tore his muscle from the bone during a 2-0 win over Ipswich Town but Leeds opted against a medical procedure in the hope that Berardi, who has played only eight times this season, would be able to play a part in the final stages of the term.

Berardi is close to a return and appeared in an Under-23s match a fortnight ago but was substituted before half-time complaining of tightness in the same hamstring he damaged against Ipswich.

Price, however, said Berardi suffered no recurrence of his original injury and was expected to experience minor niggles after three months out. Head coach Marcelo Bielsa installed Berardi has a first choice centre-back at the start of the term but has barely had use of him owing to a knee problem sustained in August and Berardi’s subsequent hamstring tear.

Berardi will miss Saturday’s visit to Middlesbrough as Leeds look to recover from last weekend’s defeat to new Championship leaders Norwich City but Price told the YEP: “He’s getting there.

“He tore his hamstring completely off the bone when he injured himself against Ipswich so for that hamstring to reattach is a really major thing. It changes how your hamstring works and you don’t find out until they expose themselves to 100 per cent of activity how they’ll respond.

“Berardi playing 45 minutes for the Under-23s just tightened the rest of the hamstring. The injury he had is still intact and fine, we had scans on that, and it meant we could do different work with him in the gym to load another area where he was tight.

“His is a really difficult injury. You go to some surgeons and they’d say ‘that’s six to nine months’. We’re trying to get him back quicker from that but there’s always going to be a much higher risk of injury, perhaps for the next three months, than there would be for someone else coming back.

“The normal re-injury rate is 15 per cent and he’s a lot higher than that so no matter how much work you do with him there’s a chance he gets injured when he comes back. But when we do the hamstring testing in the gym, he’s the strongest in the squad because he’s done so much work. Now it’s about transferring that into 90 minutes of a game.”

Price and his staff have dealt with an extensive list of injuries his season but Berardi and Stuart Dallas are the only players currently in the treatment room. Dallas, who damaged an ankle last week having just returned from a fractured toe, is due to begin outdoor running next week.

Izzy Brown, meanwhile, has been passed fully fit by United’s medical team, a year after he underwent major surgery on a torn anterior cruciate ligament.

Brown, the on-loan Chelsea midfielder, is yet to make his debut for Leeds with Bielsa intending to put him through as many as eight development squad matches before using him in the first team.

His return was delayed by a minor hamstring complaint before Christmas but Price said: “Izzy from our point of view is fully fit. Now it’s for him to produce on the pitch what the coaching staff need from him, which is learning the movements we do in training and everything else.

“He’s still doing gym work with us but he’s training fully with the team and involved in Under-23s games. He’s fine.”