With reports suggesting that Harry Kane could miss up to three months, the question is can Tottenham survive without him? DEAN WORKMAN explores.
Kane suffered an ankle injury in Sunday’s 4-1 win at Bournemouth and is expected to be ruled out until the end of April, putting him in a race to be fit for England’s World Cup campaign in Russia. Sources in the UK press have suggested that Kane’s recent setback could be as serious as the injury in September 2016, which kept him out of action for seven weeks.
While England manager, Gareth Southgate, will undoubtedly be sweating over the prospect of not having his star man at the World Cup, it is Mauricio Pochettino and Tottenham who should be the more concerned parties at the moment.
I mean which team in the world wouldn’t miss a man who has scored 35 goals in 39 games this season and who was Europe’s leading goal scorer in 2017 with a total of 56 goals for club and country. That’s more goals than Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, a feat that no one has been able to manage for some time.
Spurs are blessed with a plethora of attacking options, which was further strengthened with the arrival of Lucas Moura in January. These options have allowed Pochettino to rotate his forward line up with the one exception being Kane.
It would be fair to think that Fernando Llorente would be the one to deputise for Kane as he was signed from Swansea in the summer for that very reason. The Spaniard, however, has failed to even make the bench recently and before his hat-trick against Rochdale in the FA Cup fifth-round replay last month, he only managed two goals in 26 games.
The in-form Heung-min Son, who has seven goals in his last four matches, will give the Argentine manager another option but that will require an adjustment of the free-flowing forward line we have seen so much of this season.
Tottenham Hotspurs undoubtedly have the quality to survive without Kane if all their other attacking talents are fit and firing but whether those talents can maintain that required level to ensure that his absence is not felt remains to be seen.
Spurs are still in a fight for a top-four position and remain in the FA Cup but the loss of their main man threatens to derail their season just a week after exiting the Champions League.
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