Any hopes Arsenal had that Gabriel Jesus’s knee injury wasn’t as bad as feared have been dashed with the news that he underwent surgery to correct the problem in his medial ligament.

Arsenal look set to be without Gabriel Jesus for a number of months after it was confirmed that the striker required surgery on the knee injury he picked up during the World Cup.

The Telegraph confirmed the news on Tuesday afternoon and Arsenal confirmed the procedure had been completed a few hours later:

https://twitter.com/Arsenal/status/1600175305083310083

Arsenal did not give an estimated timescale for his return with their update.

In recent days, in contrast to English media who were pushing Arsenal’s line of ‘wait and see’, Brazilian media claimed Gabriel Jesus’ knee injury would leave him on the sidelines for around three months.

That’s a long run of missed games for Arsenal, including matches against Newcastle, Tottenham, United, and City.

Jesus had been keen to remain in Qatar with Brazil but Arsenal were understandably more keen to get him back to London where they could make a proper assessment and get his treatment started ASAP.

The news is certainly a massive blow but it remains to be seen if Arsenal will make a move in the January window for a replacement (unlikely) or if they might even recall Folarin Balogun from his loan.

It was initially claimed that he did not have a recall clause in his deal, but Football.London threw that into doubt.

Balogun has scored eight times for Stade de Reims this season so far but, as things stand, it does not look like Arsenal will take that option, either.

In September last year, Granit Xhaka suffered a similar injury, although his did not require surgery.

He was out for 69 days, missing nine games.