Sky Sports pundit and former footballer Gary Neville has claimed ‘alarm bells’ are ringing after Harry Kane’s recent performance for Tottenham Hotspur.
The north London club hosted Chelsea and were comprehensively swept aside by Thomas Tuchel’s men, with the final score being 3-0 to the visitors.
Much of the pre-game talk was about each team’s star striker – Kane and Romelu Lukaku – but in the end, goals from Thiago Silva, N’Golo Kante and Antonio Rudiger settled the fixture.
While speaking about the game on his podcast, Neville claimed that the England captain ‘looked despondent’, and that this could be a worry for Spurs across the season.
He explained: “The statistic before the game that we were given was that Harry Kane, last week, played his first [90-minute appearance] for Spurs where he didn’t have a shot on target.
He continued: “Yeah, so little things like that start to, I suppose, ring a little bit before the game, alarm bells.
“And then today, I think that there’ll be some questions coming out of that game, because he looked despondent, I felt, towards the end.
“And he was playing against a very, very good team, and he’ll have been part of a Tottenham team over the years that will have been in this position whereby Chelsea have a good record and he’ll be thinking, ‘I’m here again, I’m playing at Tottenham, we’re not going to challenge for the title, we’re probably not going to get into the top four’. And he wanted more, he wanted more, he wanted to go and challenge for titles.”
TIF Thoughts on Harry Kane and Spurs…
Throughout the summer, it was fairly clear that Kane wanted a big move away from Spurs – it certainly looked as though he could well end up at Manchester City, but in the end, no deal was ever finalised.
Will Tottenham Hotspur make top four this season?
Yes
No
While the Tottenham star has since claimed he is fully committed to the club, he has been unable to prove that on the pitch so far. Indeed, he is yet to score in the league for the Lilywhites this season, despite having played four games.
After so much talk about his future, this season was likely going to be one full of scrutiny for Kane. The longer he goes without a goal and while Tottenham are still losing games, his commitment is going to be questioned by people like Neville.