Tim Sherwood won a battle with Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy over Harry Kane during his stint as Tottenham manager, according to the Sun.
The newspaper claim that straight-talking Sherwood, who managed Spurs in the second half of the 2013-14 season, was pushing hard for Kane to be selected in the first team towards the end of a campaign in which they finished sixth in the table.
The Sun report that Levy was concerned that the market valuation of flop Spaniard Roberto Soldado risked being jeopardised if he was omitted from the attack in place of the unproven youngster.
It is said that Sherwood was convinced that Kane was out-performing £26million Soldado and “lobbied hard for the Englishman’s inclusion in the side”.
In the event, Sherwood got his way and Kane was given a run of matches at the end of 2013-14 that paved the way for him to develop into one of the outstanding players in the Premier League.
He scored in three consecutive league games in April 2014 while Soldado took a back seat and then emerged as the premier striker at White Hart Lane in the following campaign.
Soldado stayed on for another campaign in which he scored just a single league goal and was sold to Villarreal for £13.5million in the summer of 2015 after scoring just 16 goals in 76 Spurs matches in all competitions.
By contrast, Kane has secured consecutive Golden Boots and accumulated a remarkable 99 goals from 165 Spurs appearances.
Sherwood, who was the Spurs development manager before taking over the first team, was replaced by Mauricio Pochettino in the summer of 2014 but has drawn praise for establishing a pathway from the Tottenham academy to the first team and bringing the likes of Andros Townsend, Nabil Bentaleb, Ryan Mason, Tom Carroll, Steven Caulker and Jake Livermore through the ranks.