Liam Donnelly will be out until the start of 2021, manager Stephen Robinson has confirmed.
The midfielder recently underwent an operation on a knee injury which will keep him out of action.
Donnelly has made one appearance so far in 2020/21 in the Scottish Premiership opener at Ross County in early August.
“Liam has had an operation,” said the Motherwell boss. “He was down seeing the specialist on Thursday.
“It was a little bit worse than we feared, so we are looking at being into the new year before we see Liam back again.
“We’ve been unfortunate with things that have gone against us. It was innocuous. Nobody was near Liam when the injury happened. It’s been a big blow.
“He will be a big miss to us but Mark O’Hara is playing in that position at the moment and doing well. We’ve got some younger kids in Barry Maguire and Dean Cornelius who are doing very, very well at the moment. It’s just when you throw those. younger boys in.”
The manager also provided an injury update on other first team players, with Nathan McGinley fit and available for selection after being sidelined since the Ross County game.
“Jake Carroll and Charles Dunne are making progress but remain unavailable,” he said.
“Scott Fox will have an operation next week on his knee. We’ve just had to wait for the swelling to go down.”
