OK, so we're still waiting.

Sitting and waiting for that regression to the mean, that moment when Harry Kane's luck runs out and we recognise that the purple patch is over.

Strikers blow hot and cold. They can overperform for a very long time before finding their level, which is going to be several rungs beneath where they are. Professional gamblers know that. It's the nature of chance and probability and all that.

Except it hasn't happened yet. And the Tottenham striker's debut on the international stage was so impressive that you start to wonder whether it will happen at all, or, at the very least, when it does happen, if it will be as dramatic as some suggest.

Kane came on with twenty minutes to go against Lithuania and was greeted like Muhammad Ali arriving in Zaire. Seventy-nine seconds later, he scored to make it four-nil and Wembley showed him more love than they had shown any England striker since Wayne Rooney rolled on to the scene more than a decade ago.

It shouldn't be like this. There should be some rational caveat that tempers the enthusiasm. Like pointing out that scoring after coming on with a 3-0 lead against Lithuania is something within the reach of most top-flight strikers. And that maybe showering endless praise on a young man who is still in his debut campaign as a starter is not the best way to nurture budding talent.

Then again, Kane has scored 29 goals this season in all club competitions. He also has five goals in five appearances at Under 21 level and now another, in less than 20 minutes on the pitch, for England. When you consider the minutes played - he came off the bench often in the first half of the campaign - it works out to nearly a goal a game. And you can count on one hand the number of strikers in Europe who achieve that.

The reluctance in embracing Kane - and why it's so over-the-top now that he is being feted - has to do primarily with two things. First, he does not look like a modern English striker - or, indeed, a modern striker of any kind. Despite his six-foot plus frame, he's not particularly strong or powerful. And he's not particularly quick off the mark. In other words, he's not very athletic and that's simply out-of-sync with the types of strikers the modern game celebrates and especially not the ones England has produced. Think back through the last 15 years of England forwards - from Les Ferdinand and Alan Shearer via Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen on to Daniel Sturridge and Danny Welbeck - they're all athletically gifted. To find a Kane type you need to rewind all the way back to Teddy Sheringham.

In Kane, you have a striker for whom technique and football intelligence are key components. And that's something we simply haven't seen in a long time.

The other factor is that for us to admit Kane is as good as his record, many would have to admit they were wrong. In a football culture where the slightest hint of precocious ability is rewarded with mega-contracts and England call-ups - think Theo Walcott going to the World Cup back in 2006 - Kane toiled in obscurity. His loan spells - Leyton Orient, Millwall, Norwich, Leicester City - weren't as poor as they're now depicted and in some cases he was slowed by injury, but at no time was he spoken of as the Messiah. Between the ages of 19 and 21 he worked under Harry Redknapp, Andre Villas-Boas, Tim Sherwood and Mauricio Pochettino. His playing time increased gradually but not one of them hailed him as a phenomenon until the sheer weight of his goals forced him to do so. If you were Daniel Levy and he lives up to his potential at the very least you'd expect to go talk to your former bosses and say: "Guys, did you really not see what this kid could do?"

The sense is that this will end one of two ways. Either the analytics nerds are correct and Kane will come back down to Earth and live out the rest of his career as a David Nugent-type or it will be a serious indictment of the folks who looked after him right up until Christmas this year.

The frustrating thing about Greg Dyke is that he seems to operate in a vacuum. His proposal to increase the number of required home-grown players on Premier League squad lists form the current 8 to 12 (out of 25) puts him on a collision course with the league. It may or may not be a battle worth fighting, but what's frustrating is that he seems oblivious to the fact that he could put his point across far more intelligently and have a greater chance of winning if he only paid attention to what was happening elsewhere.

Over at UEFA, Gianni Infantino, the General Secretary, talked of increasing the home-grown requirement in the Champions' League (which also stands at eight). Were it to happen - and rise to, say, 12 across Europe - then at the very least you'd have a situation where the Premier League couldn't complain that it was making clubs less competitive in Europe, because everyone would be in the same boat. But, of course, Dyke is either ignorant of this or chose not to reference it (which would be even more foolish).

What's most frustrating is that Dyke is all about sticks, not carrots. He could look at other solutions, like linking a portion of the TV money, to having a certain percentage of, say, young English players on the pitch (which would do more for development than having squads stocked with a bunch of homegrown reserves, as is the case now). That would be strictly voluntary, but it would provide an incentive to clubs. And it would get homegrown youngsters on the pitch while fueling investment in youth. But,of course, such talk is way over his head.

It's tough to understand what Scotland Under 19 coach Ricky Sbragia is thinking when he calls Jack Harper a "luxury" and doesn't call him up. It's not that playing for Real Madrid automatically makes you a great player, but getting a five and a half year deal probably does suggest that one of the world's wealthiest clubs sees more in Harper than Sbragia does.

His issues seem to be with the fact that Harper is tall and slender, rather than being built like, say, Stuart McCall. But we're talking about one place in the squad to make the guy - who, lest we forget, could still opt to switch and play for Spain - feel a part of it. It's not just an obvious message to Harper, it's a message to all young Scottish footballers: we look for certain qualities and if you're like Harper, well, sorry, you just don't have them.