The latest on Son Heung-min's hamstring injury

Tottenham are assessing the damage to Son Heung-min's hamstring after the forward was replaced by Erik Lamela in the early stages of Sunday's defeat to Arsenal, but they are yet to decide whether he can represent South Korea in the forthcoming international break.

Fantasy football players all over the country inhaled through their teeth after Son pulled up after 19 minutes and immediately reached for his hamstring. It prompted Jose Mourinho to throw on Lamela, who later opened the scoring with a stunning Rabona.

But Spurs they felt the absence of their South Korean talisman and ultimately fell to a 2-1 defeat at the Emirates.

Immediate suspicions of a hamstring problem were soon confirmed by Mourinho, who shed some light on the injury after the match. He admitted it was a muscular problem and put it down to the amount of football Son has played over the past couple of weeks; the Arsenal game was his fifth appearance in the past fortnight.

"That’s football, I don’t know how long it is. It's muscular," he said. "Muscular is always not easy. He’s a guy that normally he recovers very, very well from any kind of injury. And that’s football.

"[It's down to] accumulation of matches. In the Europa League I gave him 30 minutes rest, so 90 minus 30 is 60, but 60 is still 60. And when you are in so many competitions, some players have more minutes than others, which is normal, something that can happen."

That's all we've heard from Spurs directly so far, with their official channels otherwise pretty quiet on Son's situation. But the Evening Standard report that internally they are assessing the damage, and will soon decide whether he can link up with his country for their upcoming friendly with Japan.

He has been named in the South Korea squad - you'd hope so, given he's their captain - but will undergo tests in London this week that will prompt a decision from Tottenham on whether to pull him out of the squad to help his recovery.

In any case, it seems he won't feature in the Europa League last 16 second leg against Dinamo Zagreb on Thursday 18 March, while he also seems likely to sit out the trip to Aston Villa three days later - unless the Spurs medical team are surprisingly optimistic in their verdict.

Tottenham are in action pretty soon after the South Korea game, facing Newcastle nine days later on 3 April, so a decision on whether he can travel may indicate when a return is expected. If he does feature for his country, there is every reason to think he will be back in time for the trip to Tyneside.