REPORTS: Van de Ven injury will not require surgery, but could be out until January

When discussing Micky van de Ven’s injury, it’s important to hold the context in your mind as you process the news. The Tottenham Hotspur defender was helped off the pitch in Monday’s 1-4 home loss to Chelsea with what looked like a significant hamstring injury. Spurs fans, myself included, feared the worst.

And the news coming out today isn’t great, by any means. But it’s certainly a lot less not-great than it potentially could’ve been. Images coming out of the club yesterday showed Van de Ven in training gear at Hotspur Way without any sort of wrap or crutches, which instantly increased the hopes that his hamstring might not have snapped like a violin E-string.

And that’s the indication coming out of the Tottenham journalists this morning. Dan Kilpatrick writes in the Standard that Spurs are pretty sure Micky won’t need surgery on his hammy, and that’s unequivocally good news, though the club isn’t willing to put a date on his return quite yet.

Our good buddy Matt Law isn’t bound by the club’s lack of prognostication, suggesting that VDV might not return until January (and true to form, presenting that contextually great news in what feels close to the most negative way possible).

January is about seven weeks away, which feels like a legitimately good outcome considering how that injury looked on the pitch, except that Micky is missing the congested Christmas fixture list, and that could be about ten matches, probably more. That said, the fixture list — Wolves (a), Villa (h), City (a), West Ham (h), Newcastle (h), Forest (a), Everton (h), Brighton (a), Bournemouth (h) — isn’t awful either.

So yeah. Your reaction to this news — no surgery, but a lot of time missed — is pretty much a Rorschach test of your Spurs fandom and how you process Tottenham news. Is it good news? Is it awful news? Gonna have to come to terms with that yourself, buddy. Either way, Spurs are going to go through a not-insignificant stretch of games without their fastest defender and will need to find a way to cope with that absence. See Matty’s recent article for some ideas on how that might happen.