Harry Kane is not expected to return to action until at least March as scans on his injured hamstring have revealed a serious tear. The Tottenham striker limped off during his team’s 1-0 New Year’s Day defeat at Southampton and José Mourinho, the manager, made it clear on Friday lunchtime that he had started to plan for a number of weeks without him.

The club are wary of putting a public time frame on Kane’s absence, partly because they know he is a quick healer, who has usually returned ahead of schedule from previous injuries. There are also further checks that need to be made. But the bottom line is that the prognosis from the scans and tests so far is grim.

Spurs have six Premier League matches between now and the start of March, including home games against Liverpool and Manchester City and a visit to Chelsea. They face RB Leipzig at home in the first leg of the Champions League last 16 on 18 February, with the return not until 10 March. Kane said in a tweet: “Head up. Tough times don’t last, tough people do.” Spurs merely said that Kane had “suffered a tear in his left hamstring”.

Kane will captain England at Euro 2020 this summer – a tournament in which the team will play largely at home – and such a serious setback in the countdown would have been the last thing he wanted.

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Spurs have no specialist senior replacement for Kane, with the winger, Son Heung-min – who is available after serving a three-match ban for his red card against Chelsea – in the frame to fill in. Lucas Moura could offer an another alternative. Mourinho does have the 17-year-old striker, Troy Parrott, but he said it was “too soon” to think about relying on him. Spurs play at Middlesbrough in the FA Cup on Sunday.

“If you ask me just my feeling – good news or bad news – I am more on bad news than good news, that’s my feeling,” Mourinho said. “What the player felt, Harry Kane leaving a match, the way he did it, he didn’t think twice, it didn’t take him two seconds to realise the severity of the situation. I’m not great on grades [of hamstring tears]. I’m great on experience and feelings. I think we’re going to lose him for some period and because I am totally convinced of that I can anticipate that I don’t want to be here with you crying in every press conference now. Every minute of every game he doesn’t play we miss [him] but I don’t want to be crying all the time.”

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Mourinho was asked a question about the depth of his squad, whether there was sufficient cover in it and the long pause that prefaced his answer was revealing. “We have what we have,” he said. “That’s the squad that started pre-season, that’s the squad we have for the season. Again everybody knows the importance of Harry in the squad. I think irreplaceable. If you think about one player by one player, I think he’s irreplaceable.”

It would be naive to think that Mourinho did not want to add to his squad in January, particularly with injuries biting, and he admitted as much. But at the same time, he knew when he accepted the job that there would not be a budget for mid-season additions while he also made the point that “this is our first transfer window, not the last.”

“There is not one manager in the world that is not always looking for more,” Mourinho said. “But of course I understand the situation [at Spurs]. Let’s see what we can do.”

Mourinho said the club would loan out Jack Clarke, having recalled him from his unsuccessful loan back at Leeds.