Tottenham head coach Ange Postecoglou has played down suggestions the club have been set a deadline by Bayern Munich to decide Harry Kane’s future and aimed at a dig at the German club’s public courting of the England captain.
On Friday, Bayern submitted a fresh bid for Kane, understood to be worth £86million plus add-ons, and reportedly set them a deadline of midnight to respond.
Spurs, though, are understood to still be considering the offer -- and Kane scored four times as they beat Shakhtar Donetsk 5-1 in their penultimate pre-season friendly on Sunday afternoon.
"From my perspective I don’t know what deadlines means," Postecoglou said after the win over the Ukrainian side. "We know there’s one deadline and that’s the end of the transfer window. Beyond that, I’m in open dialogue with Harry and with the club on a regular basis.
"I’ve said to [the club] that if the status quo changes, then inform me. I don’t need to know about the comings and goings in between. I just want to deal with what’s in front of me because I’ve got to still, irrespective of the outcome of that, I’m building a team here.
"I can’t wait [around] for a decision either way to get going. We don’t have the time or the luxury to do that. I’m working with what’s in front of me. You saw today that Harry certainly is invested in what we’re doing and we’ll keep on doing that unless something changes."
A number of senior figures at Bayern, including club president Herbert Hainer, have publicly talked up the potential impact of signing Kane this summer.
"That’s up to Bayern to decide," Postecoglou said. "If that’s the way they want to conduct things, it’s not up to me to judge that. It doesn’t affect me. I don’t sit there on a daily basis and worry about what other clubs are doing. I think what is factual right now is that he is a contracted player of our football club.
"I certainly wouldn’t talk about contracted players at other football clubs but I’m not at Bayern mate so they can go the way they want."
It is still unclear if Kane will be a Spurs player when they begin the campaign at Brentford next Sunday and Postecoglou said he would deal with the need to replace the 30-year-old only in the event that he is sold.
"I’ll deal with [needing to replace Kane] when the time comes," the Greek-Australian said. "I’ve always had these contingencies in my head anyway, whether it’s Harry or anyone else, there’s no guarantee about anybody.
"There’s all sorts of things that can happen that affect your planning. I’m not going to spend a lot of time or energy thinking about something that may not happen because, again, I don’t have that luxury.
"It’d be different maybe if it was my third or fourth year at the club, if we’d already established the way we play, established the squad and that was my major issue or only issue then maybe I’d be a little bit more obsessive about it. But right now, I’m trying to build a style of game, a squad of players, different training, there’s so many things that are really important that I can’t be distracted by one or two other things."
Kane opened the scoring from the penalty spot and scored three smart close-range finishes in the second half as Spurs thumped Shakhtar, with youngster Dane Scarlett adding a fifth with the final kick of the game.
"I don’t think his [professionalism] has ever been in question about Harry," Postecoglou added. "His whole career he has shown that. He was good today and the majority of our stuff was fairly positive. Obviously still got a fair few things to work on.
"He’s a fantastic striker, one of the world’s best. I think the way the team plays will help him as well. He loves scoring goals and you saw today we created a load of chances and he was the beneficiary of that."
Kane applauded supporters in all four stands of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium after the game but Postecoglou said he would not tell fans how to react.
"I’m not going to tell people how to feel [or] what to read into it at the end of the day," Postecoglou said. "I don’t even know what’s in Harry’s mind, let alone anyone else’s. I think all these things will obviously play out over the next period, we’ll deal with what happens from there.
"From my perspective, I’ve got a team to build here. Today showed me that we’ve made some progress but there’s still a lot of work to do. There were areas today I wasn’t delighted with, so we need to make sure we focus on getting this team right. We’ll see what happens after that?"
