Watching the graceful fluidity of Manchester City as they flowed through and around Sporting Lisbon on Tuesday night, you might wonder what they ever saw in the attraction of Harry Kane.
And when you take a casual glance at Kane ’s goalscoring record this season, five in 21 Premier League games - fewer than City ’s “non-goalscorers” Raheem Sterling, Riyad Mahrez, Bernardo Silva, Phil Foden and Kevin De Bruyne - that wonder simply increases.
Kane goes up against the Blues at the Etihad Stadium on Saturday, for the first time since his attempt to wrangle a transfer from his stubborn chairman Daniel Levy failed, and the contrast in fortunes between his Tottenham and the City team he wanted to join could be made even more stark.
If City can keep their rich vein of form going, and Spurs suffer as abysmally as they have done lately, that clash will be one-sided and reinforce the misguided notion that the league leaders simply do not need a striker.
Not in Pep Guardiola’s head. Make no mistake, he wanted a recognised goalscorer last summer, and Kane was the one he wanted. And he still wants one now.
While the Blues won the title last season without a recognised striker - apart from Sergio Aguero’s sporadic appearances in an injury-hit final season - Guardiola is of the opinion that they won it, and reached the Champions League final, despite not having a striker, and not because of it.
Being lulled in by City’s mesmeric rhythm, and their use of a false nine to twist and break defensive formations, it is easy to think that football does not get much better than this.
Guardiola does not think so. Despite employing Lionel Messi as a false nine to devastating effect at Barca, he has always tended to operate with a striker - Samuel Eto’o, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and David Villa at Barca, Mario Mandzukic and Robert Lewandowski at Bayern Munich and latterly Aguero at City.
His train of thought is that while City have been very good this season, they could have been even better with a striker, especially one who is tuned in to his side’s precision and intelligent movement, but who has the physicality to thrive in English football.
Kane would have fit that bill perfectly. He bullied and out-witted Aymeric Laporte in Tottenham’s 2-0 win over City at White Hart Lane last season, to the extent that Laporte lost his place in the team to John Stones for much of the season.
In some ways, Kane operated like a false nine in that game, dropping deep to lure in an unwitting Laporte - who provoked Guardiola’s wrath because he had been warned beforehand that this would happen - and leaving wide-open spaces behind them for the busy Heung-Min Son and Steven Bergwijn.
The first goal was a direct result of Laporte, feeling the need to close the gap on Kane, getting tight and leaving the space for Son, always deadly against City, to exploit.
The second could have been from the City playbook, Kane again sitting deep and picking up the ball in his own half before striding away and picking the right moment to release Giovanni Lo Celso to clinch it.
There is a strong argument that with Phil Foden mastering the false nine, and Bernardo Silva, Kevin De Bruyne, Ilkay Gundogan and Jack Grealish all proving more than competent in variations of the role, that an actual striker would disrupt rather than enhance.
But Guardiola could point to the times when it didn’t work, and the fine margins in matches that have not ended up as wins.
The goalless draw with Southampton in September saw City have 16 goal attempts, one of them on target.
The 2-2 draw at Anfield saw the Blues register twice as many attempts as their main rivals, scoring two from 12, while Liverpool bagged a much more efficient two from six.
The home defeat by Crystal Palace saw City have almost twice as many attempts on goal - 14 to eight - but lose by 2-0.
With a lethal goalscorer, City could be out of sight by now, and unstoppable in the Champions League.
City’s tendency to share the goals around is laudable and highly desirable, but they have done that consistently in the last decade - it is just that they also had Aguero averaging over 130 goals a season from 2013 to 2019.
That is why they twice smashed the English goalscoring record in that period, overturning Manchester United’s 57-year-old mark of 143 by scoring 156 in 2014-15 and then obliterating that with a staggering 169 in 2018-19.
This current City side looks like it has goals coming out of its ears at times, but they are way off the pace of that record-breaking side, in which Aguero contributed 32 on top of a group of players who all bagged double figures - Raheem Sterling (25), Gabriel Jesus (21), Leroy Sane (16), Bernardo Silva (13), Riyad Mahrez (12) and David Silva (10).
That is the scenario Guardiola has in his head - that the current share-and-share-alike way of scoring goals is healthy and excellent - but a recognised goalscorer would ADD to that, and not simply replace it.
Guardiola has also shown a willingness to bend his principles to fit in with English football - he recently praised Liam Delap as “a killer, typical British striker”, adding “Every training session, every time he fights, he wins the duels or breaks his nose”.
The comparisons between Delap and Kane are obvious, except Delap has a much better record than the England skipper had at the same age, and is quicker.
But Kane is proven in the Premier League. Delap may knock around Laporte and John Stones on the training ground, but Kane has done it out in the heat of battle.
The Kane ship may have sailed, especially with the younger, more affordable Erling Haaland seemingly coming on the market this summer.
But City are still in the hunt for a focal point to their attack, someone who will get on the end of those pinpoint crosses and exquisite diagonal passes from Mahrez, Joao Cancelo, Gundogan and Jesus.
City without a striker are magnificent. With one, they could be completely unstoppable.
