Harry Kane

[T.A]

Bless you.

 

[Roque Santa Cruz]

There's no doubt that Kane is doing well both in the PL and in the national team, but I'm not sure if he would be successful in the Spanish or German league. At the other hand: Why would he even consider leaving the PL? In terms of salary there's really no reason to try his luck abroad.

 

[Look Out There Are Llamas]

Considering that not long ago he was being farmed out to Leyton Orient and Millwall, where he was used as a midfielder as often as a striker - I don't think he's done too bad!

He only ever played as a striker for us - although he was on loan at the same time as Tom Carroll and Paul Jose M'Poku and if you'd have said one of them is going to have a top end Ballon d'Or nomination worthy career I'm not sure I'd have picked out Kane. (I wouldn't have, I'd have picked Carroll, I'd also have been very surprised if any of them did).

Kane obviously isn't going to move to Bayern at any point in the future cos Lewandowski, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Real Madrid actually having a little sniff. I think JimJams is right that Spurs will probably have to nuke their wage structure to keep hold of him.

 

[Bilo]

I think JimJams is right that Spurs will probably have to nuke their wage structure to keep hold of him.

Which they bloody well should. I find that in England, it's often underrated how incredibly important a great striker can be (despite the Prem's history of strikers carrying teams). For as long as Kane is in his prime and plays for Spurs, Tottenham are potential challengers. Period, c'est tout, that's it, and it's worth 250k a week. It doesn't necessarily mean that Tottenham aren't an accomplished side throughout (they are) or that Pochettino doesn't deserve credit for what he's done (he does), just that a good striker makes such a ridiculous difference. Whatever they have to pay him, pay it. Because for Tottenham and for their potential future success, the 10 players behind him can be replaced but he certainly can't.

 

[Stevencc]

Does Klopp disagree, have misplaced trust in Sturridge/Firmino or did he fail to identify a suitable striker in recent windows?

 

[Bilo]

Does Klopp disagree, have misplaced trust in Sturridge/Firmino or did he fail to identify a suitable striker in recent windows?

To win the league or even be successful in a broad sense without a very good striker isn't impossible, there are a few examples of it. But you can choose any league at any time in the past 25 years and it'll be remarkable how rarely the winning team doesn't have a player in the top three in the scoring charts. It goes for the Swedish second division and it goes for the top leagues in the world. The correlation becomes almost depressing if you focus on it for too long. You can give Simeone all the credit in the world for 2013/14 but Costa scored 27 goals that season and they won the league. Today they're a more accomplished side in almost every position, but their top scorer Griezmann landed on 16 goals and they were nowhere near. Vardy got 24 when Leicester won the league, which is half the miracle. Literally.

A class striker does so much more than just give you goals, it's a guaranteed threat. It's a comfort at 0-1 down and it's a comfort when you feel pegged back without having too many breaks. It forces the opposition to think twice, maybe add another defensive minded player to "cut off supply" and voila, you concede ten less goals over the course of the season than you would if you had a striker the opposition consistently feel confident they can handle. Everton is a very good example of this this season, but you can also look at City in games Agüero was out. They concede more.

Barca is weaker now than they have been in well over a decade but Messi is performing as good as he's ever done and if he keeps doing that they'll walk the league. He's a remarkable player but not a remarkable example. Just another one like Suarez for us, like Costa for Atlético (and possibly even Chelsea), like van Persie for you lot when he declined, like Kane for Spurs should he leave.

An average team with a top class striker might very well lose to a top class team with an average striker. But the average team with the top class striker will win the league nine times out of ten. It's just a horribly depressing thought imo.