Nobody knows how serious Harry Kane’s ankle injury is

Tottenham Hotspur’s 6-0 FA Cup win over Millwall was a bit of a pyrrhic one for Spurs after Harry Kane went down holding his ankle in the first half. Spurs’ talismanic striker limped off down the tunnel and was replaced in the formation by Christian Eriksen, with hat trick hero Son Heung-Min moving up to be the primary striker.

After the match, Mauricio Pochettino was a little bit more willing to share than he usually is when one of his player goes down with an injury. Pochettino said Kane twisted the same ankle he injured earlier this season.

"It's the same ankle as before in the Sunderland game. Now it's a matter of waiting. We will assess it tomorrow and, after tomorrow, we will see what happens. It's difficult. It looks a similar situation to Sunderland. It was a similar action. It's sure it will be difficult for him to play against Southampton on Sunday but we need to wait now and see what happens.

"Harry was in the boot afterwards because in a situation like this, the doctor is cautious. Before a scan, the doctor tries to immobilise the joint, with a boot and crutches – to try to avoid any [further] problems.

"Harry is our main striker, one of the best in England, but we can't cry about it now. We have enough players to try and replace him. It won't be an excuse if we don't win or achieve our aims because Harry is not in the team."

The bit about it looking “similar to Sunderland” is the most alarming thing about Pochettino’s statement, but that’s because after his ankle injury against Sunderland Kane missed eight weeks. That’s causing a fair amount of panic amongst Tottenham fans on social media, who are now fretting about whether Kane might actually miss the rest of the season.

That’d be, obviously, the worst-case scenario, but it’s way too early to make that kind of 1:1 correlation. The fact is that nobody knows. Ankle injuries are tricky things. The fact that Kane limped off under his own power is probably a good sign, but it might be masking a more serious problem. We won’t know how much time Harry might miss until the physios are able to make a proper diagnosis, and that could take a couple days.

I’m not going to make any kind of predictions because I’m not a doctor, but even if it’s a minor injury it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Kane doesn’t feature against Southampton next weekend out of an abundance of caution. The weekend after that is the international break. Beyond that, all we can do is wait for ore news.