Given the way Mings, Buendia and Bouba all returned from ACL injuries will hopefully give him confidence and belief in the rehab process. We should also take comfort in the fact that we've seen players come back and perform at precisely the level they had before the injury. Yes, it's a season without him, and it will probably mean some big changes to our transfer plans, but at 24 I'm confident he'll be back to his previous levels by next summer.
Without having to call out Harley Street's Dr Paul_e, I recall him mentioning there are various levels of an ACL, each with a different recovery time expectation.
Yep, if they're saying 9 months it's a full tear. And if so even when he's back there will be 6 months+ of problems because you effectively need to learn to walk/run again because no matter how good a job they do it's not going to be exactly the same. This is why Buendia was out for a year and then took another season to get back to any sort of form.
There's a high chance we won't see much of him before Xmas 27 I reckon.