Jose Mourinho’s Tottenham Hotspur are unable to call on the services of Spurs talisman Harry Kane for the foreseeable future.
BBC Sport pundit Mark Lawrenson has expressed his concern with how Tottenham Hotspur will cope without Harry Kane following surgery on his hamstring injury, in his weekly column.
The Spurs talisman and England captain has been ruled out until April at the earliest after he ruptured a tendon in his left hamstring, for which he has gone under the knife.
However, earlier this week Tottenham head coach Jose Mourinho admitted he didn’t know when Kane would be back, not ruling out the prospect of him not being back this term.
Spurs must now crack on without their goal machine, with an early Saturday kickoff away at Watford up next for Mourinho and co in the Premier League, and Lawrenson highlighted the huge tactical problem the North Londoners will now have to cope with.
“It is going to be interesting to see how Mourinho approaches things without Harry Kane,” Lawrenson wrote on BBC Sport. “In that scenario last season, they used Son Heung-min and Lucas Moura, but they were very much operating on the counter-attack.
“One of the problems Spurs have got while Kane is injured is, if they cannot counter-attack, they struggle to break teams down – purely and simply because there is no-one to hold the ball up for them.”
Mourinho’s charges will be hoping to build on their midweek FA Cup third-round replay win over Middlesbrough when they take on the resurgent Hornets, who have been steered out of the bottom three by Nigel Pearson.
While Spurs have failed to win any of their last three fixtures in the top flight, slipping to eighth place in the table, Watford have won four and drawn one of their last five in the league to go up to 17th spot, the first time they’re out of the relegation zone since August.
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