Sadio Mane could be out for up to six weeks after his calf injury sustained after scoring against Arsenal on New Years Day.

Sadio Mane is set to miss up to six weeks after scans revealed the extent of the damage to his calf muscle.The diagnosis is that a minimum of four weeks probably six will be required before he is fit again

However given that Saints would have been without his services for the best part of a month with the player travelling to the Africa Cup of nations with Senegal, most of the time he will be out was time he would not have been available anyway.

But the club are sweating on what the reaction of Senegal will be, Saints would obviously prefer to have him at St Mary's where they can treat him properly with up to date medical facilities and they have sent the full details of the injury plus the scan etc for the Senegal medical people to look at, they are hopeful that their doctor will agree with the scans and concur that it would be a waste of time for him to travel.

However it is their perogative to insit he travel to the tournament in the hope that the injury might heal quicker than expected, if they do that then Saints have two worries, the first is that he will not get the medical care he would receive here, if only for the fact that back at Staplewood we have permanent facilities and physicians working in a known enviroment as opposed to over in Equatorial Guinea where the Senegalese will not have the facilities nor the staff to treat Mane with the time and care he needs as they will also be attending to the rest of the squad,

The second worry is that they may try to rush him back, although he could be out for six weeks to fully recover anyone who has had a muscle injury will know that a lot sooner than that it feels ok and the temptation is that you might get 20 minutes or so out of it, however although that is the case and a player can get through a game, it often damages the muscle further putting back full recovery.

So hopefully Saints will not be without Mane for much longer than they would have if he had remained fit to play in the tournament

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