It has been a strange couple of weeks for Harry Kane. He has returned early from a bad ankle injury, has been lampooned for claiming a goal against Stoke City, has been mocked by the Football Association’s Twitter account and was even the butt of a joke by Ben Purkiss, the chairman of the Professional Footballers’ Association, in front of his peers at their awards evening on Sunday.

Kane could be forgiven, along with the rest of us, for having to Google exactly who Purkiss is after he “quipped”: “Harry Kane is so prolific that he is able to score without touching the ball.” A search will have shown the 34-year-old is a journeyman defender whose career started at Sheffield United but slid down from there. He is currently at League Two Swindon Town.

Nothing wrong with that, although quite why, as chairman of the PFA, the players’ union which is there to support its members, he felt it necessary to take the mickey out of Kane is another matter.

But that is the “bantz”, as the football world cringingly says, and Kane will obviously have been the recipient of far more vicious ribbing, not least in the Spurs dressing room since he appealed against the Premier League’s decision to award his side’s second goal against Stoke to Christian Eriksen. But at least that stays within the four walls. It is not an attempt to ridicule him in public by the FA or his own union. What is the point, Kane might wonder?