Leeds United suffer Adam Forshaw blow as midfielder breaks kneecap

The holding midfielder has fractured a patella and will be out for six weeks, taking him into the summer break.

It is the latest setback for a player who was dogged by injury problems for two years but has had a good appearance record this season.

"He took a knock in a collision on his kneecap and it fractured," said coach Jesse Marsch. "It's a six-week injury."

Although he will not play again in 2020-21, Marsch says Forshaw still has an important job to do.

"Adam is one of the guys who gives more to the group and does everything he can to think about the team first so for us it's painful but we will still have him around and he will be a big part of the group in the next weeks and we will still need his presence in the team," he said.

"It should be a relatively straight-forward recovery and by summer he'll be back and ready to go.

"He's a leader in the team, an important guy in our so we definitely need his presence, for sure.

"He's been really good since I've been here and really important for many years here. The one silver lining is that Kalvin is back to 100 per cent and will start on Monday."

Phillips has only appeared as a substitute since he recovered from the hamstring injury suffered in December.

Marsch remains optimistic centre-forward Patrick Bamford will be fit to feature in the final two matches of the season.

"Patrick is making good progress and has been running on the Alter-G (anti-gravity treadmill) and he should be on the pitch next week and Tyler Roberts is also making good progress," said Marsch.

"Patrick's exactly on track for where we hoped he would be. We're trying to be cautious and aggressive at the same time, that's always the balancing act.

"One of the things you have to give credit to with the medical team here is the statistics show we've had a lot of injuries over the past year but we get players to return quicker than a lot of places and I think that's a lot of credit to the medical staff and what they've been able to accomplish. For example Junior Firpo came back quicker than expected.

"Patrick I'm cautiously optimistic we can have him available for those last two matches like we hoped."

Speaking for the first time since his comments to Talk Sport about Leeds players being "over-trained" before he took charge in late February, the American was keen to stress he meant no disrespect to predecessor Marcelo Bielsa and apologised for comments that was "a little bit careless".