Louis van Gaal has dismissed suggestions that midfielder Daley Blind will be sidelined for six months. The Dutch international recently suffered a major injury while on international duty. It is yet another problem for Van Gaal, who has had to deal with a sea of injury troubles since the start of the season. Since his arrival to United, the Dutchman has never had a fully fit squad to choose from. It has been mentioned as one of the reasons for the club’s poor showing this campaign. In recent weeks, though, the injury situation appeared to finally come good with a number of players like Michael Carrick returning to action.

The latest international break has wreaked havoc into the United team with as much as three new players likely to miss the upcoming matches for the club. David de Gea and Michael Carrick are major injury worries for the weekend’s match against Arsenal, while Daley Blind is definitely ruled out.

Dutch national team boss Guus Hiddink said thatBlind was likely to be sidelined for around six weeks after injuring his ligaments. United’s official Twitter account made an error and quoted the recovery time as six months much to the shock of United fans.Van Gaal has cleared those statements by confirming that Blind is likely to return before the start of 2015.

“[Blind] is not ready, he has a brace on his knee. It’ll be 10 days’ rest, then we’ll have another scan and say more about his injury.It’s not as bad as the doctors thought after the match, but it shall be a long story, I believe, but not six months or something like that.We have to wait for tomorrow’s training session to decide if [some players] are back.My philosophy is that you have to train at least one week with the squad, better two,” said Van Gaal.