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Some potentially bad news if you're a fan of Tottenham youth academy graduates. Reports are circulating that both midfielder Nabil Bentaleb and 17-year old defender Cameron Carter-Vickers are both out for the remainder of the season after picking up injuries. The reports seem to originate via @thfcacademy, a Twitter account that follows Spurs' youth teams closely.
In other news, I'm told Cameron Carter-Vickers and Nabil Bentaleb are injured for the rest of the season.
— Tottenham Academy (@thfcacademy) March 19, 2016
First, Carter-Vickers' injury has been obliquely confirmed by in an interview with USA U18 Andi Herzog on US Soccer's website that the young defender has withdrawn from USA's squad. The injury had to happen extremely recently, as Carter-Vickers was on the bench for Thursday's home tie with BVB Dortmund at White Hart Lane.
Carter-Vickers hasn't made his Tottenham first team debut yet but has been widely tipped to be working towards a role in Spurs' team next season as the primary backup to Jan Vertonghen. An injury is certainly bad news, but probably doesn't hurt Spurs' title hopes all that much. Carter-Vickers was almost certainly the emergency fifth center back behind Eric Dier and wouldn't be pressed into action unless absolutely necessary.
The severity of Bentaleb's injury hasn't been confirmed, but he was subbed off via injury in the first half of Tottenham U21's 3-0 win over Leicester City on Friday. It's been widely speculated that Bentaleb's Tottenham career has been on the ropes this season after an early injury cut short his playing time and put him behind Tom Carroll and Ryan Mason in Tottenham's central midfield pecking order.
Again, these are, as of now, unconfirmed reports. There probably isn't a good reason to disbelieve @thfcacademy, but it'd be wise to remain skeptical until we get some sort of confirmation from the club. Which may never happen, since Spurs tend to be very cagey with their injury news, especially at the U21 level. Regardless, there's a decent amount of evidence to suggest that both of the players are out for the foreseeable future, which is a major bummer.