“Until this August, it had become a running joke that Kane had never scored in the first month of the campaign. He was the definition of a slow starter, though he broke that hoodoo last month by scoring in Tottenham’s 3-1 Wembley win against Fulham, before ending another barren run with his first goal at Old Trafford against Manchester United a week later.”
Just a month into the 2018-19 season, Harry Kane’s form is seemingly causing concern after a slow start for Tottenham and England.
Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher and Jamie Redknapp — three former England internationals — have all claimed this week that Kane’s ineffective recent performances for Gareth Southgate’s national team against Spain and Switzerland were a sign of the 25-year-old hitting a physical and psychological wall.
Neville recalled how he himself had “really struggled mentally and physically” after playing virtually non-stop from the start of the 1995-96 season for Manchester United and England until helping his club with the Treble in 1999.
Redknapp pointed to Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo benefiting from a family holiday during this international break, insisting Kane also needed “five or six days, just to break away from it,” while Carragher claimed he has “never looked quite like the Harry Kane we know” since returning from an ankle injury last April after spending just three weeks on the sidelines.
There is merit to these comments. Kane certainly appeared less explosive during the latter stages of the World Cup and in the early weeks of this season. And, as he showed at Euro 2016 when his heavy-legged performances typified those of Roy Hodgson’s team, when Kane runs out of gas he becomes a shadow of his usual self.
But if you flip the narrative, it could be argued that Kane is actually performing better at this stage of the season than any in the past.
Until this August, it had become a running joke that Kane had never scored in the first month of the campaign. He was the definition of a slow starter, though he broke that hoodoo last month by scoring in Tottenham’s 3-1 Wembley win against Fulham, before ending another barren run with his first goal at Old Trafford against Manchester United a week later.
So for the only time in his Spurs career, Kane will return to Premier League action after the first international break having already opened his goalscoring account for the season.
Against Spain at Wembley last Saturday, Kane linked well with Marcus Rashford in a 2-1 Nations League defeat and looked sharper in open play than he had in the World Cup knockout games against Colombia, Sweden and Croatia, when the effects of a long domestic season looked to have caught up with him.
ESPN/The Genius Media
