Tottenham Hotspur may have won at the weekend, but they seemingly still haven’t solved one of their biggest problems this season – Harry Kane’s form.
The striker is yet to score a single Premier League goal, and aside from a hat-trick in the Europa Conference League against the lowest-ranked side in the competition, he’s really not looked himself this season.
Why is this? Well, it’s very easy to point towards the dark cloud of this summer’s transfer saga lingering over him or even a bit of burnout from the Euros, but in our view, Kane’s issues may at least partially lie in how he’s adapting to Tottenham’s tactics.
Indeed, while Kane’s body language and demeanour tell a part of the story, the way he is playing in this system highlights another issue.
To put it bluntly, Kane hasn’t adapted to Nuno Espirito Santo’s system and he seems to be stuck in Jose Mourinho-mode.
What do we mean by this? Well, let’s take a look at the role Kane played under Mourinho.
Under Jose, Kane played a different role to the one he played under Mauricio Pochettino and a different role to the one he plays for England.
He was something of a hybrid player. He tried to be everywhere at once, playing as a number nine, a number 10 and even a number six at times, and under Mourinho, where he was the absolute focal point of a team that built play slowly, it worked.
He was the top scorer and the top assister in the Premier League last season, but he’s yet to register a single goal contribution in the competition this term.
In our view, Kane is trying too hard to replicate what he did last season rather than being an out and out number nine which is what Nuno’s system requires from him.
Espirito Santo’s system often relies on quick counter-attacks and wing play rather than slowly crafted moves from midfield, and in order for that to work in an attacking sense, you need to have a player making runs into the box to get onto the end of crosses, and Kane isn’t doing that.
Just look at Ian Wright’s synopsis of Kane’s performance in the recent north London derby, it tells the story perfectly.
Harry Kane, for the second goal, I saw him do something. He got caught on the ball and he didn’t know what he was actually doing to the point that he mis-stepped and miskicked it. Arsenal won the ball and from there it got interesting from what I watched. In that first half, I saw Tottenham get down the right and Kane was on the edge of the box, he wasn’t attacking the box,” Wright said.
“In this instance where he lost the ball, he ran 60 yards nearly, he tackled Saka, that’s how much determination he showed to rectify his mistake. He tackled Saka, but the ball ran to Saka and he scored, but what I saw from that is that he’s not making the moves he should make as a striker, but he’s running 60 yards to rectify a mistake, when you only want him to run five into the box.”
That sums it up perfectly, Kane would rather run back 60 yards to make a recovery tackle than run five yards into the box to be a goal threat, he’s too focused on other aspects of his game when he should be concentrated on getting the ball into the back of the net.
Under Mourinho, this dynamism made sense for Kane, it was a slower system that allowed him to do these things while still being in the right place to finish the chances that he’d played a part in carving out, but under Nuno, that isn’t the case.
This is no longer a team that slowly crafts out opportunities and builds in the midfield, this team attacks quickly and directly and if Kane is stood on the halfway line by the time a cross comes in, what good is he doing?
Kane can still be an asset in this side. After all, he’s one of the world’s best finishers and he’s been described as ‘brilliant’, but if he’s going to flourish under Nuno, he needs to play as a more traditional centre-forward rather than in this free-roaming role we’ve seen him playing in thus far.
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