Tottenham manager Andre Villas-Boas hopes midfielder Mousa Dembele does not need hip surgery that would rule him out for six weeks.
Dembele quickly become a fans' favourite at White Hart Lane following his deadline day move from Fulham, but Tottenham have had to do without the playmaker for the last four games after he aggravated a hip injury while on international duty with Belgium.
The 25-year-old struggled with the problem while at Fulham, and initial scans on the area failed to detect whether he had seriously aggravated the injury while playing against Scotland. "We want to avoid surgery if we can," Villas-Boas said. "If there happens to be surgery I think we are looking for one month, one month and a half."
He added: "Hopefully that will not happen because we have some good indications the player will be back in one week or two weeks.
"It's a pain that goes away or happened to go away when he was at Fulham for two or three days and the pain went away but it is still there. He can't move himself properly so he will have a deeper scan on the injury so we can assess it properly."
Although Tottenham have moved up to fourth in the Barclays Premier League despite Dembele's absence, Villas-Boas could do with the former AZ Alkmaar man back soon as he faces up to a tough run of matches following Saturday's home game against Wigan.
Spurs failed to follow up their win over Southampton with another victory on Wednesday night when they were knocked out of the Capital One Cup by Norwich.
One of the main talking points from the 2-1 defeat was the team's late penalty, which came about after Kyle Walker went down under the challenge of Marc Tierney. Tierney said he did not touch Walker and Canaries boss Chris Hughton said the England right-back "made a meal" of the challenge.
Having grown up on a council estate in Sheffield, Walker took umbrage at Hughton's suggestion he went down too easily.
"I'm from up north. I'm not going to go down softly," Walker told Press Association Sport at an event to publicise the Topps Match Attax Tour. "I thought I got a clip so I went down. It was a foul. The referee has awarded a penalty, or the linesman did. They were close enough to see it. If I felt I was touched then I am going to go down. That's it."
Source: PA
