Alan Shearer will be out of football for at least two months. The ankle injury that the England captain sustained in the Umbro Cup tournament at Goodison Park on Saturday was sufficiently serious for him to undergo surgery in the north-east yesterday morning.

The Newcastle United manager Kenny Dalglish announced that Shearer had had an operation on his right ankle and would be absent "for months rather than weeks". It was Shearer's third operation in less than a year since he joined Newcastle in August 1996.

"He had an operation this morning to repair torn ligaments," said Dalglish. "He will be out for a wee while, months rather than weeks."

Shearer is a remarkably quick healer, but it is unlikely he will be fit to play for England when they face Italy in Rome in early October. However, according to a Newcastle official, Shearer will not miss the whole season as had been feared at first.

Shearer, though, will not be in the Newcastle team to meet the winners of the Partizan Belgrade-Croatia Zagreb European Cup qualifier at St James' Park on August 13th, or in the England team who face Moldova at Wembley in a World Cup qualifier three weeks later.

Having agreed to sell Les Ferdinand to Tottenham Hotspur on Friday, Newcastle find themselves in the peculiar position of being understaffed up front although Dalglish felt "crisis" was too strong a word to describe the situation. "We had three class strikers and now we've got one," he said referring to Shearer, Ferdinand and Faustino Asprilla.