Harry Kane’s goal against Everton on Saturday kept the Tottenham forward on course for an historic double.
Kane needs just nine more goals to surpass Jimmy Greaves’s all-time record of 266 for Spurs and, with the World Cup looming, he is just two shy of Wayne Rooney’s record England haul. All being well, Kane will surely celebrate becoming the top scorer for club and country in the same season, possibly even in the same month.
Against Manchester United tonight, Kane is vying for a far less meaningful milestone, but one which nonetheless reflects his consistency: if he scores, he will become the first Spurs player to find the net in six consecutive Premier League games, despite the sense that he is still working his way through the gears this season.
Much like Spurs themselves, who have a record 23 points from their first 10 Premier League games, Kane is enjoying one of his best-ever starts to a campaign — he has scored nine in 10 League games, bettered only by 10 in 10 in 2017-18 — but is yet to reach his brilliant best.
Kane’s strong start to the campaign has perhaps gone under radar because of the form of Manchester City’s Erling Haaland, the only player outscoring him in the League. But, plainly, the England captain is yet to reach the heights of, say, his performance in Spurs’s 3-2 win at City’s Etihad Stadium in February. He is getting there, though, and the last couple of weeks suggest he is coming to the boil at just the right time for both Spurs and England.
He earned praise from his club manager, Antonio Conte, for his intelligence in the Champions League win over Eintracht Frankfurt a week ago and was Spurs’s standout player against Everton, twice going close before finally drawing a foul from Jordan Pickford and beating him from the penalty spot.
Strikingly, Kane appears to be getting stronger and fitter with every game, in spite of the crazy schedule, and he is increasingly controlling matches for Spurs in a way he was not at the start of the campaign.
In the likely absence of Dejan Kulusevski and United’s Christian Eriksen, who is a doubt to face his former club through illness, both sides could be missing their creative hubs, and there is a real possibility that both sides could simply cancel each other out tonight.
United’s big wins over Arsenal and Liverpool this season have been achieved with a counter-attacking style, but Conte is happy for his side to cede possession and play in transition, particularly in this kind of match. A game of cat and mouse potentially awaits, so there may be a particular onus on standout individuals, like Kane, to make the difference in a cagey affair.
If Kane is looking for inspiration, Cristiano Ronaldo delivered a classic one-man show in this fixture last season, scoring a brilliant hat-trick as Spurs went down 3-2, despite an encouraging display.
United manager Erik ten Hag faces a decision over whether to stick with the Portuguese or recall Marcus Rashford, who was benched for the 0-0 draw with Newcastle at the weekend.
Spurs will also be without Richarlison, who is set to be sidelined for two weeks, and a question for Conte is whether to move Ivan Perisic or Lucas Moura into the front three, or switch to a five-man midfield, with Yves Bissoma coming in and Heung-min Son partnering Kane up front.
