Tottenham news: Robbie Keane sends Harry Kane warning to Spurs over top four plans

Posted Thursday, September 20, 2018 by Express.co.uk

Tottenham news: Robbie Keane sends Harry Kane warning to Spurs over top four plans
Harry Kane has endured a slow start after a golden summer (Image: GETTY)

ROBBIE KEANE says Tottenham cannot afford to give Harry Kane a break even if he needs one as it could mean missing out on Champions League football next season.

The club legend was part of a Fab Four of striking options when Tottenham last won a trophy in 2008 with Dimitar Berbatov, Darren Bent and Jermain Defoe also vying for goals.

These days though the goalscoring burden rests entirely on Kane’s shoulders.

Yet another game passed on Tuesday in the San Siro with Kane failing to fire off a single shot in the 2-1 defeat to Inter Milan.

And yet the England captain will need to be the first name on the list for Brighton that Mauricio Pochettino compiles at the weekend.

“Knowing Harry the way I do – he used to clean my boots when I was there – he just wants to play football and score goals,” Keane said.

“But he is in a different situation to when I played, because they don’t have four strikers like we did.

“They have him and Fernando Llorente. No disrespect to Llorente, because he’s a good target man who will do a job for the team, but he’s not going to score 20 or 25 goals a season.

“So if Tottenham leave Harry out, because he’s tired, then they’re making a statement that they don’t want to finish in the top four.

“It’s just not going to happen if you leave him out for a few games, because of the goals that he brings, so it’s unrealistic to rest him.

“At the same time, it’ll annoy Harry, all this talk about him being tired. If he scores a couple of goals this weekend, though, people will forget about it.”

Although Kane finally broke his duck for scoring goals in the Premier League in August, he has failed to score in his last five games for club and country, a drought he has not experienced since the relative dark days of the 2016 European Championships.

Time, team-mate Erik Lamela believes, for the rest of the squad to step up and breach the gap.

“Harry is not a machine,” the Argentina international said.

“He scores a lot. Against Inter he didn’t and for two or three games he didn’t. But he will score again.

“It’s not like Harry needs to score every single game. Against Inter, Christian Eriksen scored, I scored against Liverpool. Heung-Min Son will score. Lucas Moura will score. All the pressure is not on Harry. All the attacking players need to score. And that’s it.”

Tuesday’s defeat was also the first time Tottenham have lost three games on the bounce in four years under Pochettino

But Lamela added: “I don’t think we’re losing our confidence. We still believe in each other in this team. That’s why we always fight until the end of the season.

“Of course, people are thinking like this. But inside the dressing room, I can tell you it’s not like this. We believe in this team.

“It’s time to win again. The way we played against Inter will help a lot but we have confidence in ourselves.”

Worryingly, it was also the second time this season that Tottenham lost having surrendered a lead late in the game.

“We’re disappointed because we were winning and to lose like this in the last 10 minutes is bad,” Lamela said.

“But we need to keep going and move on. It’s the only way to recover from this – to keep putting everything on the pitch and try to get back to winning ways.

“I don’t know honestly if we deserved to lose. In the second half, we scored and then we managed the game. They were tired, we should have scored more goals.

“I had a lot of chances, my team-mates too. Their keeper did well – sometimes the ball goes in.

“We have to improve and next time try to score and finish the game. That’s it.”