Erik Lamela will get his chance next year

Erik Lamela has been injured all spring and we've been holding out hope that he'd return for the end of the season. But Tim Sherwood talked to the press about Lamela today, and he made it sound like we wouldn't see any of him between now and the end of the season.

Here's what Tim had to say about Lamela.

'There'll be no chance Erik's fit. I read in the paper, or someone told me, that the hierarchy here are asking for him to get more opportunities. Chance would be a fine thing, he's injured.

'That's still an unknown quantity as far as I'm concerned. I've assessed the rest of the squad and I've got my ideas on who's capable and probably who's not, and Erik the jury's still out on him because I haven't seen enough of him so he's been very unfortunate. I think the benefit he will have is he'll be settled so he'll improve from that but as regards settling into the Premier League I think the jury's still out because he's not played enough football.'

This is the same thing we've heard over and over since Sherwood's taken over, but we've been hoping that something would change. Unfortunately, he hasn't recovered enough to get on the pitch, which will probably prevent him from going to the World Cup. It sucks.

But it also probably means that Lamela won't be sold this summer. All of the rumors floating around about how Spurs would like to cut their losses and offload Lamela in the offseason never made much sense, but they really don't make sense if he's not fit. While Spurs probably don't have much interest in letting Lamela go for, say, £20m, who's going to take that £20m risk right now?

Lamela is going to get his shot to prove himself next season. Whether that's just to put himself back in the shop window or reestablish himself as the man Spurs are counting on to be the future of the club remains to be seen. But all today's news changes is that we'll have to wait until August to get an idea of what Lamela can do in a Spurs shirt.