Erik Lamela is not expecting to play again this season as Tottenham decide whether or not he still needs surgery on his persistent hip injury.

The Argentinean midfielder is being assessed every day, and he saw specialists again on Tuesday to try to solve this difficult problem. Tottenham have been hoping for months that Lamela would not need surgery but the longer his recovery takes, the stronger the case becomes for an operation.

There is little prospect now of Lamela playing again this season, with or without surgery, with Spurs’ last Premier League game on 21 May less than two months away.

This summer Lamela will have two years left remaining on his Spurs contract. He signed a four year deal, with two option years, back in 2013, taking his contract up to 2019. Talks over a new deal, and a decision about his future, have been put on hold while Lamela tries to regain fitness.

This has been a very difficult season for Lamela who, through a combination of unfortunate circumstances, has been unable to build on his impressive performances last season. Last December he had to return to Argentina after his brother was involved in a serious domestic accident, an incident which badly affected the player.

Lamela needed a change of scene in January which was why he was allowed to return to Rome for rehabilitation, with doctors he knew from his time at AS Roma. After a scan on 20 January suggested that Lamela would not need surgery, he returned to Spurs to recover. But two months on he has not been able to return to full training pain-free which is why surgery is an increasingly likely solution.

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Earlier this month Pochettino said that he was in the dark as to when Lamela would return to the first team. “I can’t say one, two or three weeks, or one month or maybe next season, because I don’t know,” Pochettino said. “My position is too difficult. We are assessing him every day. Sometimes he is involved from the beginning in the warm-up with the team, sometimes he feels pain, and we change the plan. It is day by day.”