Chesterfield's George Carline out for five months with serious knee injury after 'horrendous' tackle against Wrexham

The wing-back, who was voted the Spireites’ player of the year last season, was stretchered off late on at the Racecourse Ground on Tuesday night.

The 28-year-old will have surgery on Saturday.

Town boss James Rowe said it was an ‘horrendous’ tackle and a ‘blatant’ red card.

The manager also said that the surgeon stated he had ‘never seen anything like it’ in terms of a sports injury.

"How the lad stayed on the pitch I will never know and to not even be given a foul for it is an absolute disgrace,” Rowe said at Friday’s pre-match press conference.

"I feel for the boy because he has actually hairline fractured his knee in the tackle.

"He was in pain at half-time but he wanted to stay on which sums up his character. He has gone back out and the knee has just fell away.

"It is a completely fractured knee cap so it is a long-term injury and he is out for five months.

"He goes into surgery tomorrow.

"The surgeon said he has never seen anything like it in terms of a professional sports person. He is a top surgeon who deals with a lot of players at a lot of levels. It is more an injury you get an impact from in say a fatal car crash. His knee is completely severed off.

"It is a blow for us but we will try and get him back as quickly as we can and as safely as we can and make sure his mental health is okay for the next five months.”

Rowe highlighted a ‘flaw’ in the ‘scandalous feedback process’ for officials at National League level in that there is only one camera angle for them to look back at the game.

"That needs to improve, without a doubt,” he said.

"When you show them different camera angles from the club point of view, of course they are honest and say it was a poor tackle.

"I just find the feedback process scandalous.

"I had a meeting in the summer about accountability of decision-making because in any feedback process in any organisation in the world, if there is a flaw in the feedback process then you are never going to be accountable and you are never going to improve to the level you need to.

"The National League level, for me, is getting more professional. There is more finance and better players are coming into it from higher levels as well and the game is getting faster, quicker and the quality in standard is much higher than when I started five years ago so the environment needs to improve.”

He added: "We all have the same common goal which is to make football at this level the best it possibly can. There are great strides being made in many areas but I do feel on the officiating that it is not up to speed.

"I have got no doubts about the commitment of both players in that tackle. However, it is a blatant red card. We have not been given the grace of playing 11v10 and we have suffered badly.”