Harry Kane: A tribute to the only guy stopping Tottenham from falling apart – The Warm-Up

First he was a Tim Sherwood experiment. Then a one-season wonder. Then Parry Pane. Even now, there’s a flicker of doubt in your mind: ‘Is he really that good? He sure moves slow around the pitch. Why didn’t he pass to Raheem Sterling?’

And while that last point still haunts us, as does the penalty that is yet to land in Qatar, it is maddening how mild the fanfare around Harry Kane is. 199 Premier League goals. 266 in total for Tottenham, level with the late, great Jimmy Greaves. And yet we often talk about the Premier League as though it only got its first decent striker this summer, Erling Haaland. Stick Kane in that Man City side and he would be on 20+ goals by now too.

Instead, he is carrying a team that has been allergic to attacking since the dreadful dismissal of Mauricio Pochettino three and a bit years ago. Jose Mourinho, Nuno, briefly, and Antonio Conte all have their own qualities – but all their approaches are a spin on ‘panic in possession’. So Kane reinvented himself as a No. 9.5 – a hybrid between out-and-out striker and attacking midfielder – to give his side the best chance to do something with the ball. He continued to score at an alarming rate, even when presented with only half a chance a game, while also finding time to assist everyone else too.

Against Fulham, he conjured the winner out of nothing – twisting on the edge of the penalty area, getting half a yard, then curling a brilliant shot into the bottom corner. From that weird semi-circle marking the DO NOT ENTER zone for penalties, he is probably the best we’ve ever seen.

Make no mistake, that Spurs are fifth in the Premier League this season, three points off the top four, is Kane’s greatest achievement yet. It’s not a trophy and the fact he may finish his career without one is an enormous shame, but he alone is preventing a crisis beyond what is going on at Chelsea and Liverpool… and maybe even Everton.

Sixteen goals in the league this season for a team who, under Conte, will only risk attacking under a very specific set of circumstances. This was no better illustrated than by Ivan Perisic in the first half at Craven Cottage when he had acres of space to gallop into but, with the opposition defence set, he froze. After arriving at an opposition shirt, he scanned desperately for an excuse to pass backwards. ‘Ah yes, a Spurs player is down injured, best kick it out of play’. And so he did. It’s hard to imagine any of Arsenal’s vibrant young guns being so helpless when presented with the chance to run at an opposition defender.

Anyway, back to Kane. With Alan Shearer’s 260 goals record in his sights, he can’t leave the Premier League now. But come this summer, he has an enormous decision to make if Manchester United finish in the top four, as is looking likely, Tottenham finish outside the top four, which is looking likely, and the former calls up the latter for his services, which is also looking likely.

Stop the search, Everton have finally located their Twitter password!

Sure, it was five hours after everyone else had found out, but their seven-line statement on Frank Lampard’s sacking was worth the wait. Packed with heart, soul and appreciation, their send-off included the tear-jerkers “we wish Frank well” and "Alan Kelly will remain as goalkeeping coach".

In all seriousness, it must be pretty gutting to pour everything into a job for 12 months, keep a seriously random collection of players in the top division, then show you’re up for the fight to do it again only to get binned. Zero wins in 10 games is admittedly not very good. But then neither is replacing Richarlison with Dwight McNeil and Neal Maupay. Or having a fan base at war with the board.

It's easy to say Lampard has catastrophically failed in all three of his managerial jobs, but it’s not quite fair. He took Derby to the play-off final. He navigated a transfer ban with Chelsea, finished in the top four and then was axed in the weird Covid times of no crowds. And at Everton he kept them up – the job he was brought in to do. Sure, he also took Derby from fifth to sixth, Chelsea from third to fourth, but neither of those scream “absolute failure, find a new profession”.

So who are Everton going to turn to save them this time? Well, Sean Dyche is the current favourite, closely followed by Bielsa.

Arsenal fans diving into today’s Warm-Up will rightly be expecting unrivalled insight on their new signing, defender Jakub Kiwior . The problem is we didn’t really pay any attention to him during his four games at the World Cup, nor his performances for Spezia in Serie A.

So in our hour of need, we turned to Italian football expert Alasdair Mackenzie for his thoughts on Kiwior. And fortunately, they are very good:

“It took him a while to get going at Spezia but to begin with he was playing as a holding midfielder. He spent most of last season in that role, and it's only this year under Luca Gotti that he's been playing regularly at the back, on the left of a back three (he's a lefty). He plays a bit like a midfielder-come-defender in that he's pretty composed on the ball and reads the game well. He's been pretty highly-rated in Serie A but I wouldn't go as far as to say he's torn up the league, steadily impressive rather than blowing people away.”

TL;DR – Be excited, Arsenal fans, but not that excited.

We’re not proud to admit it, but there isn’t a whole lot of airtime for Scottish football at Warm-Up HQ. But today we will make an exception after a *huge* upset.

Darvel of the Scottish sixth tier, which we assume is the equivalent of our local pub league, knocked Aberdeen out of the Scottish Cup last night. It meant we got the most wholesome of interviews from match-winner Jordan Kirkpatrick, who was asked about the night's party plans: “I don’t know. I’m meant to be at work, so I need to call my boss and ask him if I can get the night off. I might get the day off tomorrow, a wee sick day hopefully…”

Now he's one shy of the big 200, let's rewind the clock to Harry Kane's first goal in the Premier League in the glory era of Tactics Tim.

It’s EFL Cup semi-final time! Or at least EFL Cup semi-final *first leg* time! Southampton v Newcastle is our pick on Tuesday (20:00 GMT), while there’s also a sprinkling of games on the continent.