A Tottenham Hotspur academy graduate has suffered heartbreak today.
Dilan Markanday quit Spurs to join Blackburn Rovers in the Championship on Wednesday.
This represented the 20-year-old’s first opportunity at senior football and although Tottenham offered him a new contract to stay, Markanday elected to go.
On the same night, Tony Mowbray named him in his squad for the Championship encounter with Hull City.
It should’ve been the first of many outings for Rovers this season but, instead, it was his last.
According to The Lancashire Telegraph, the former Tottenham winger, who came on with 20 minutes to go, isn’t expected to play again until the 2022-23 campaign after suffering a hamstring injury.
Mowbray, speaking to Blackburn’s official website, confirmed that it was a ‘pretty severe’ issue.
He said: “It looks a pretty severe one and, without putting a timescale on it, he has a pretty bad hamstring injury that will keep him out for more than a couple of weeks. It’s a huge blow for both Dilan and us.
“It’s really hard, especially considering this is the first move away from his family and the club he’d been at since he was nine. To make that move and then to find out you’ll be out of action for a considerable amount of time, it’s so disappointing.”
Devastating
This really is such a disappointing development for the youngster.
As Mowbray mentioned, Markanday was on the Lilywhites’ books since the age of nine and for a lot of that 11-year spell he would’ve been champing at the bit for senior football somewhere.
And the fact he won’t play again until the summer is such a bitter blow for the kid, but disappointments are par for the course in football.
How you respond to them is what dictates how far you’ll go in football and no doubt the Tottenham product will already be thinking about his recovery.
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