Aston Villa striker Libor Kozak ruled out for the season

The £7m signing suffered the injury to his right leg and will have surgery today. Kozak was involved in an innocuous challenge with Ciaran Clark as the squad trained following Wednesday's 1-0 victory at Sunderland.

An ambulance arrived at Bodymoor around 1.30pm yesterday and left soon after with assistant manager Ian Culverhouse following behind. Kozak was an unused substitute in the win on New Year's Day and boss Paul Lambert confirmed the Czech striker, who joined from Lazio in the summer, won't play again this term.

"It looks like it. Kozak has got a bad one, he's got a broken leg," he said.

"It was just a nothing challenge and it's a massive blow. He takes knocks and never moans, he gets on with it so we need to find out how he is.

"I thought it was a clash of boots at first. There was no noise from Libor at all. No-one knew what happened and then they saw it.

"There was no noise from him when he got hurt. We'll have to see I guess.

"It was a tackle with Ciaran, just an innocuous tackle in the morning. There was nothing in it. No-one thought anything of it."

Kozak was set to start tomorrow's FA Cup clash with Sheffield United after sitting out the victory at the Stadium of Light.

He has scored four goals in 15 games for Villa since his summer switch from Italy, after he was last season's Europa League top- scorer for Lazio.

Kozak, 24, was bought to ease the goalscoring pressure on Christian Benteke after the hitman's 23 goals last term.

Benteke is on an 11-game goal drought but made a promising return on Wednesday after spell out with a knee injury and had an effort cleared off the line.

But Lambert refused to confirm if he would look to add another striker after Kozak's injury.

He said: "The January thing is a nightmare window because the prices are inflated.

"There are one or two I identified before this had happened. It's a blow."