The 19-year-old recently had an operation to cure a cartilage problem in his left knee and will not play again this season.

Vaughan missed the first three months of the campaign after dislocating his shoulder, meaning his first-team involvement this season has been limited.

"He's quite a tough boy mentally but this hasn't been a bad knee operation. It's just been a little procedure to cure his cartilage," said Moyes.

"Because of his history, he's going to have a bit longer time to recover. Let's be fair, with only six weeks of the season to go, it would have been quite tight for him to get back anyway.

"But we need to make sure that we look after him correctly. I've always known that will be the case. I said a couple of years ago when he had that first injury, we needed to watch him.

"He missed a lot of his development period and that for me is the only real disappointment as he'd have helped us just now. His enthusiasm would have played a big part for us.

"We will miss him and we can't just be relying on Yak (Yakubu). The goals have got to come from other areas, not just the forwards."