Harry Kane has admitted that he did not expect Tottenham Hotspur boss Nuno Espirito Santo to use him last night.
The Spurs hitman came off the bench to score a hat-trick against Europa Conference League minnows Mura.
Tottenham were only 2-1 ahead at the time but a second-half treble from Kane saw the North Londoners record an emphatic 5-1 victory.
Here’s what Kane told BT Sport: “Any striker wants to score goals, 100 percent. I probably wasn’t expecting to come on today but it was nice to get those minutes. We hadn’t spoken about it [him coming on].”
Desperation
There’s more than a whiff of desperation about this from Nuno.
The Portuguese coach went into the game on the back of three successive Premier League defeats, scoring once and conceding nine.
And considering Kane has just admitted it wasn’t a pre-planned substitution, the fact that Nuno felt he needed one of the world’s best strikers against a team like this is rather shocking.
Mura halved the deficit after the half-time break and the fear of drawing – or worse – probably prompted Nuno to change things.
Despite the desperation, this is the fundamental purpose of a substitution, to change the game.
And Kane did that emphatically in the end so you can’t give Nuno too much criticism.
Tottenham are home to Aston Villa on Sunday afternoon and a fourth defeat on the spin would make it so much harder for the former Wolves boss to keep his job.
The good news is, Spurs will have Kane for 90 minutes on that occasion.
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