Martin Taylor insisted last night that he had not meant any harm with the tackle that left Eduardo da Silva contemplating nine months out of the game and said that nothing would give him more pleasure than to see him back scoring goals for Arsenal.

Taylor, the Birmingham City defender, who was sent off after his challenge left the Croatia striker facing a long recuperation from surgery to a double compound fracture of his left fibula and dislocated ankle, also revealed his fears as he went to visit Eduardo in Selly Oak Hospital.

Speaking publicly for the first time since the incident at St Andrew’s last Saturday, the former England Under-21 centre half said: “I will be really happy on the day when I see he is back in the Arsenal and Croatia line-up and when he is scoring goals again.

“The injury was terrible enough. When he gets back to fitness and he puts the ball in the net for Arsenal for the first time, we will all feel much better. People will be able to see that accidents like these are the nature of football and you can recover from it.

“I went to see him on Saturday but, unfortunately, he was still recovering from an operation, so first thing on Sunday morning I went to the hospital and he was really good to see me.”

Taylor, who was described by Alex McLeish, the Birmingham manager, as being “mentally shattered” in the aftermath of the incident, admitted that because of the horrific nature of Eduardo’s injuries, he was worried how the striker would react to his visit.

There were initial fears that Eduardo would not play again and he is out of the European Championship finals this summer. “I was mindful of this and I thought maybe he wouldn’t want to see me, which would have been fair enough because of the trauma,” Taylor, 28, said.

“Although there was a language barrier, I just said that I didn’t mean him any harm at all and that I hoped he made a quick recovery. He took it on board and nodded. I was just really glad we could communicate. He is obviously a really strong man. Since then, I have read in the papers that he would be happy for me to visit him. That’s something I’d like to do.”

As Eduardo begins his recuperation — he will have his stitches removed next week and his leg will be put in plaster for at least another six weeks — one player who can empathise with his ordeal spoke yesterday of the challenges he faces.

Nearly three years to the day before Eduardo suffered his injury, Alan Hutton lay in a crumpled heap with a broken leg on the pitch at Ibrox. It was two seasons before his poise returned and he was able to maraud forward from right back with explosive results, securing a move from Rangers to Tottenham Hotspur last month.

Within months of making his debut for the Glasgow club at 18, Hutton had emerged as a fearless full back. But after making 24 appearances over little more than two seasons, he broke a leg in a wild challenge on Garry Hay, the Kilmarnock defender.

Memories came flooding back after last weekend’s incident. “I couldn’t even watch it, I was cringeing,” Hutton said. “I remembered my leg just hanging somewhere it shouldn’t have been. It was a real hard thing to take. In the ambulance, I asked, ‘How long will it take me to get back?’ My mum and dad tried not to show me the papers but I wanted to see.

“I questioned if I was going to come back. I sat in the house constantly bored. I’m sure those days were very tough for my partner. People don’t realise how serious the break was. It was tough to get back and when I did it wasn’t feeling right.”