Stephen McGinn will have another knee operation on Wednesday but manager Malky Mackay has confirmed the midfielder’s recovery from a serious cruciate ligament injury is going well.

McGinn suffered the injury in an innocuous challenge with Doncaster Rovers forward Jason Euell and team mate Adam Thompson on February 26.

Mackay believes it is still too early to put a time frame on how long McGinn will be out of action but the former Scotland Under-21 international is expected to be sidelined for between nine and 12 months.

Mackay said: “Stephen is getting on fine and at the moment he is certainly on target. In the next couple of weeks he will be having another procedure but he is coming on.

“The head of medical, the doctor and the surgeons are happy with his progress at the moment.

“It is going to be a long-term thing with Stephen and we have to make sure over the coming months, we give him as much medical back-up as possible and our medical and sports science teams will be taking him through every step of the way until he is back to full fitness.”

“Stephen is in here every day and he does upper body work in the mornings and they have a look at his leg and treat him every day,” Mackay continued.

“At the moment he still has another operation to go in for but in the mean time, we are looking after his injury and he does his own work in terms of his upper body work.

“He is here every day and will be under our care during the coming months.”

McGinn signed from St Mirren in January last year and after a slightly slow start to his Watford career, had this season secured his spot in the first team before injury, making 33 appearances during the 2010/11 campaign.

Whilst Mackay admitted McGinn will have tough times ahead, the Hornets manager has stressed the importance of the midfielder remembering he should still have more than a decade of his career left after the lengthy recovery.

Mackay said: “Stephen has good people around him, in his family, and he has one of the best in our head of medical Richard Collinge. We have also sent him to, who we believe, is the top knee surgeon in the country [Andy Williams].

“I don’t think he could be receiving any better care and we are managing when we have him in and when he has time off. With the longer-term injuries you have to allow them the break mentally.

“Very early on, I sat him down with myself and Richard and we broke down what the coming months would involve and that he has to get his head around the fact that it is a longer-term injury.

“He needed to get in the mindset that he has 15 years of his career to go so in the bigger scheme of things it is a small period of time.

“Although from right now until he pulls the Watford strip back on it is going to seem like a long time, in the scheme of things, as long as we deal with it properly and we get it right, then he has the rest of his career to go.”