Andone’s ruptured MCL and what it means for Brighton

Oh Florin Andone. The Romanian striker who said in an interview with The Athletic two months ago that he didn’t want to return to Brighton looks like he will be forced back to the Amex after picking up a season-ending injury while playing for Galatasaray.

Andone ruptured his inner lateral ligament and partially damaged the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee during the Turkish giants’ 2-0 win over Gaziantep on Saturday.

The injury occurred in the 11th minute and will almost certainly mean that he returns to the Albion for treatment. Oh to be a fly-on-the-wall when he comes across his former teammates and manager with whom he completely burnt his bridges just a week after moving to Galatasaray.

Just in case you’ve forgotten, here’s what happened. Andy Naylor had travelled to Belgium to see Andone and his new club take on another Albion loanee in Percy Tau and his side Club Brugge in their Champions League meeting.

It looked like it would be a wasted trip for Naylor as neither Andone nor the Lion of Judah featured. That was until Naylor managed to grab a word with Andone after the game, during which he launched into an astonishing rant about his time with the Albion.

Andone blamed Chris Hughton for not playing him enough, took a swipe at Glenn Murray by questioning why Brighton’s top scorer of the previous three seasons wasn’t dropped to make way for him and even tried to claim that his red card against Southampton – you know, the one where he nearly snapped the leg off Yan Valery – was unlucky.

He said he was disappointed at the way that the Albion had treated him, completely ignoring the fact that he’d featured in 27 games under Hughton and all three of Potter’s opening matches at the helm.

Andone finished the interview by saying that although Potter could recall him in January, he didn’t want to come back. Clearly, fate was in a mischievous mood then when she decided to end Andone’s season – and with it, his spell at Galatasaray – early.

There are varying degrees of severity when it comes to MCL injuries. Luis Suarez famously went from having surgery and being in a wheelchair to scoring twice against England to eliminate the Three Lions from the 2014 World Cup inside of six weeks.

Given that Turkish media have reported that Andone is now out for the season, it would appear that his MCL issue is at the more serious end of the scale. Which is gutting news for both him and us.

Andone had been in decent form since his move to Galatasaray, starting six Turkish Super Lig fixtures and appearing three times in the Champions League.

He’s notched two goals in that time with Galatasaray apparently having asked if they could make the loan deal permanent for £5m in January, an offer that Brighton rejected.

Chances are Galatasaray would have come back with an improved bid or failing that, another club on the continent might have been willing to pay more for his services based on what he was doing in Turkey.

The Albion probably could have expected to make some profit on the £5.2m paid to Deportivo La Coruna in the summer of 2018, which would have been good news for all concerned.

Should Andone be out for the season now though, Brighton’s chances of offloading him appear slim. Not many clubs will take a risk on parting with big money for a player who is returning from a serious knee injury without first seeing him get a run of games to prove he is over the problem and hasn’t lost too much ability.

Andone’s comments to The Athletic mean that he has boxed himself into a bit of a corner. He was already pretty unpopular with his teammates, the video footage of Bernardo kicking him before the Southampton game being just the tip of the iceberg.

At one point during training last season, Andone put a ridiculous challenge in on Murray which injured our top scorer.

The Daily Telegraph‘s Paul Hayward tweeted after Andone’s loan to Galatasaray that his leaving party could be held in a phone box because so few people would care about him going – and that was before he so publicly criticised not just Murray but Bernardo, Alireza Jahanbakhsh and Jurgen Locadia too.

Will Graham Potter want to put Andone in an Albion shirt again? His record of 30 appearances, six goals, five yellows and six games missed through suspension point to a player who is more trouble than he’s worth.

Yet if the Albion want to get rid, he’s almost certainly going to have to play for us at some point in order to put himself in the shop window. The big fee that the club were dreaming off looks to have gone up in smoke, whatever happens.

Unless of course Andone can get himself back to full fitness by the end of the season. His loan deal with Galatasaray runs through to the summer, and if he ends up playing for the Yellow-Reds again then we might yet be able to offload him this summer.

For that reason alone, we should all be wishing him a speedy recovery.