I'm sure he's got Louis in his ear giving him a few pointers on how to keep his chin up. Not many players would be better suited to give that advice than him.
He also has his own injury recovery rehab history to fall back on. Badly broke his leg a few years back playing for Weenix. Was out for awhile (not 12 mths admittedly) from memory.
I was listening this morning to a discussion about another player, Florian Wirtz, who also suffered an ACL tear on the weekend, and the timeline to recovery they were discussing there was closer to 7-9 months.
Still a very long time, but getting back Oct/Nov/Dec ‘22 is a lot better than March ‘23, so the 12 months might just be a maximum conservative timeline. Every player is different of course, Zlatan Ibrahimovic famously came back from an ACL tear in seven months at 36 when people said it would be career-ending.
Harris is due back in early May, so a 9.5 month lay off. Though there have been murmurings of an earlier return. 12 months is very conservative (or Alex's injury has been deemed quite serious?)
They said he would be operated on in 4 - 6 weeks. Sounds like they're not in a rush.
May just take that long to plan and book the surgery, esp when you have a health system under some stress. Or needs time for swelling to reduce or something. And so not really an indicator they are in no rush.