Tottenham's fit-again Steven Pienaar admits the past few months have been the worst of his career.

After being passed fit for Thursday night's Europa League clash against Rubin Kazan,

Pienaar said: "It's been the most difficult period of my career. When you join a new team, you want to start fully fit but I got injured quite early and it slowed down my progress.

"Before the operation we thought we would wait and see how the groin injury developed but it just got worse.

"I had the operation, things were going well, but then I had two setbacks. Sometimes when you try to get back early, that happens.

"But I'm over the nightmare now so hopefully I can get some minutes."