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Harry Kane MBE

Never thought much of Barnard but I did like the look of Cameron Lancaster in his 10 minute cameo against Wigan, looked really sharp and lively.
 
milo said:
I can't remember anyone ever talking him up.
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Can't believe he's already 30 years old.

He did have a very good scoring record for our youth sides and both Southend and Southampton. Even made it back to the PL with Southampton, but has struggled since. Signed for Southend again, but they've loaned him out.
 
The Times has a positive piece on Kane (below), followed by a less positive piece on club youth policy (see link)

Everyone who encountered Harry Kane on the way up tells a version of the story. None of the managers or coaches who played a role in the Tottenham Hotspur striker’s inexorable rise has a bad word to say about him; they invariably recall the tale with a reflexive fondness. It is likely, though, that they were just a touch more exasperated at the time than they now care to admit.

This is how Chris Hughton tells it, casting his mind back to the injury-curtailed season that the 21-year-old spent under his tutelage at Norwich City, two years past. “He was not a difficult boy to manage at all,” he says, affectionately. “But there came a point where you would have to pull him off the training pitch. He always wanted to train. Finishing, in particular. He wanted to do extra finishing work all the time.

“We would normally have three goalkeepers training with us, and it might be that the two reserves would be the ones involved in shooting drills. Harry would stay out with one of them doing extra finishing. Even when they had gone in, he would still stay out, without a goalkeeper. He didn’t mind, really. He just wanted to train. The thing is that he was always a good finisher anyway.”

Kane spent six months of the previous season at Millwall. The variant of the story that sticks with Kenny Jackett, his manager at the New Den, differs in the details but echoes the same spirit. “The football he was used to playing in the under-21 league for Spurs was of a good technical level,” says Jackett, now in charge of Wolverhampton Wanderers.

“The football in the Championship is much more physical, though, and normally you have to warn young players to watch for the difference. Harry worked it out. He came to me after the first couple of games and told me — not the other way round — that he needed to win more headers, that he had to compete more in the air to get himself in the game. That was what he worked on in training. That and his finishing. He did so much finishing. The coaches would have to tell him he was about to pop his thigh if he didn’t stop.”

Even that would not have worked at Leyton Orient, the first club he joined on loan. Kane was just 18 when he moved to Brisbane Road, one of three Spurs prodigies sent to east London for a taste of competitive football. “I had seen him training before he came here,” says Kevin Nugent, the League One side’s assistant manager.

“He was always doing extra work with the development squad — free kicks and finishing especially. You could see the hunger to do well. It was the same when he was with us, and of course because it was a youth loan, he could still go back to play games with their development squad if he had not been selected for us. With that sort of work ethic, it’s not surprising he’s kicked on.”

Kicked on he has, of course, emerging this season first as a cult hero to Tottenham’s fans — one of their own, as they sing — then, probably more significantly, as the side’s most potent weapon. He has scored 14 goals, despite spending the early weeks and months of the campaign as a substitute, his appearances and exposure carefully rationed by Mauricio Pochettino, the head coach. His target, he says, is 20, surely comfortably realistic. All of that extra training has paid off.

That is the instinctive reaction to Kane’s story and the stories about Kane, of course: that here is a young player who showed the diligence and determination necessary to succeed and is now reaping the richly deserved rewards. There is, though, another interpretation, one that reflects just as well on the player but far less kindly on his parent club.

Kane’s appetite for self-improvement is not the only common thread between the recollections of Hughton, Jackett and Nugent. All three men were, one way or another, close to Spurs, in a position to be tipped off about his progress. Nugent had a good relationship with Joe Jordan and Tim Sherwood, who oversaw Spurs’s development squads and allowed them to watch their young players train; Jackett had forged a bond with the club after taking Andros Townsend on loan a couple of years previously; Hughton, of course, is a Tottenham man through and through.

All three had been advised by contacts and friends that Kane had something; all three were inclined to believe it. What is not clear is whether Spurs saw these loan spells — as well as the time he spent at Leicester City in 2013 — as a crucial part of his development, whether it was part of a painstaking, meticulous plan, or whether the process was more piecemeal than that. Certainly, Kane’s circuitous career path is not exactly typical of a player who has long been earmarked for stardom.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/football/premierleague/article4306173.ece
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Jordinho said:
Can't believe he's already 30 years old.

He did have a very good scoring record for our youth sides and both Southend and Southampton. Even made it back to the PL with Southampton, but has struggled since. Signed for Southend again, but they've loaned him out.
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The was some story about him getting into tax trouble with a block of flats he was building in Bournemouth so he clearly has an eye on what he will do after he finishes with football.
 
Weird article. All our most promising young pros are sent out on loan to get them used to men's football and to work on physical and match day aspects of football. It also represents a chance for others to get clubs once they leave us and perhaps we get a fee for them. It's a decent philosophy that is getting criticised for no real reason or foundation. Lately our record of developing professional footballers is really good and that is testament to the work and plans that we have in place I guess
 
LCLC said:
Weird article. All our most promising young pros are sent out on loan to get them used to men's football and to work on physical and match day aspects of football. It also represents a chance for others to get clubs once they leave us and perhaps we get a fee for them. It's a decent philosophy that is getting criticised for no real reason or foundation. Lately our record of developing professional footballers is really good and that is testament to the work and plans that we have in place I guess
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Agreed. I find the end of that article very strange indeed. It is pretty clear that the philosophy at our club is for our best young players to go and experience being a proper part of a first team squad.

I spoke to Tim about this a long while and he said that it wasn't just about the players getting first team football but (and this applied to the levels lower than the Championship especially) it was about being part of a group that are properly playing for their living. the best kids at clubs like Spurs are in a bit of a bubble really and for them to go and play for a team where the players are reliant on their win bonus to be able to pay their mortgage is extremely good for them. These sorts of players will not accept a teammate not giving their all, will not accept a player not tracking back, shirking a tackle or a player going for glory when a teammate was better positioned. It is this sort of aspect that of football that the club like the talented kids to experience as it breeds the right mentality in them for when they return.
 
20 goals so far this season for Harry Kane (15 with Spurs, 5 with England).

Not bad going for the first half of the season.
 
And yet, he can still improve. He still needs to sharpen his decision making, he needs to know when to pass, and when to go for goal. He needs to learn when to aim a shot, and when to just hit it. This will come in time though, he has a lot of potential and to score the number of goals that he has so far this season, at a young age, is excellent.
 
It would be no exaggeration that Kane will save the club £30-40m. As that's what he will be worth in a few season's time I'm sure.
 
El Guepardo said:
And yet, he can still improve. He still needs to sharpen his decision making, he needs to know when to pass, and when to go for goal. He needs to learn when to aim a shot, and when to just hit it. This will come in time though, he has a lot of potential and to score the number of goals that he has so far this season, at a young age, is excellent.
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Yes, and we need him to. He also needs to understand the timing of the when to be greedy and when to let someone else score and kill off the match (see 1st half today)

that said, a lot of credit for where he is already ..
 
NWND said:
It would be no exaggeration that Kane will save the club £30-40m. As that's what he will be worth in a few season's time I'm sure.
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Only if he continues to improve and doesn't plateau. As I've said, he has ability but let's see just where he gets to first. He's improved a LOT in a season, how much more does he have?
 
In modern football people start creaming the second a kid has two good games.
But Kane has GENUINE potential - doing well in the first team with his ability and everything is coming off for him.

The key how hard he will work to improve ( seems like he will and really wants it) and how he copes mentally when his drops
 
Kane has obvious areas to improve, finishing, decision making & close in passing come to mind.

A lot of PL strikers have one good season then struggle, because Kane tends to play deeper (not leading the line), he's a little harder to isolate, but he will have to adapt when teams/defenders start making plans specifically to counter him.
 
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