Ebbsfleet fear striker Rakish Bingham will miss the start of next season through injury.

The 29-year-old suffered an Achilles injury during Saturday’s 1-0 win at Slough and the Fleet expect to discover how long he will be sidelined for this week.

Either way, Bingham is definitely out for the rest of this season.

“It looks like his Achilles has gone, we’re just waiting for confirmation,” explained manager Dennis Kutrieb.

“It looks like a massive injury and we won’t see him back soon. It’s definitely his season ending, 100%. It takes up to six months.

“If the results come back as what I expect then I think we won’t see him in the beginning of next season, either.

“It’s a long-term injury, it’s nothing like what you can fix in eight, 10 or 12 weeks. This is more months, in the worst case with Haydn Hollis he was out for one-and-a-half years. He re-ruptured it as he started too early so it was a really bad injury.”

Bingham has been an integral part of the Ebbsfleet squad this season, scoring 18 goals and forming a devastating partnership with Dominic Poleon.

Kutrieb stated he’ll still be part of the celebrations when the Fleet win the National League South title, even if he can no longer contribute on the pitch.

“I think he will be in the right mindset,” added the Fleet boss. “He knows, regardless of what his injury is, that he was a very important player over the whole season.

“He played 40 games and was one of our main players. It wouldn’t cut him out of the celebrations, he will be with us during the six games somehow and will be with us because he’s a vital and important player for us.”

Bingham was the first player Kutrieb identified when he took over as Fleet manager in 2020 and he paid tribute to everything the striker has done in an Ebbsfleet shirt.

“He was with me from the first day,” recalled Kutrieb. “He came in very early as a trialist and I said straight away I wanted to sign him.

“He was a great personality, a good character and he showed me more than enough on the pitch how good he can be. I think he had one week with us and I said we should sign him if we can.

“He has paid everything back that I wished and asked for so from that point of view I can only speak very highly of him.”

In a double injury blow, the Fleet will also be without Craig Tanner for the rest of the campaign after he broke his foot in training last week.

Midfielder Tanner had only just returned from injury having not played since January.

“This is another terrible one,” explained Kutrieb. “He’s just come back from injury and was ready to go.

“We were thinking whether to pick him for Slough or Taunton and then he broke his foot in last Wednesday’s session. He won’t be back this season.

“With him it’s easy as it is just six weeks out but by then the season is over.

“He was far ahead of schedule. At the beginning they were speaking about if the season might be over for him as the injury looked bad but then he came back very quickly.

“This is obviously a different injury, when something is broken we can put a timescale on it as that’s how long the bone needs to grow together.”