Harry Kane transfer fight will get DIRTY… there are no ‘gentleman’s agreements’ with Spurs chief Daniel Levy
IT was amusing to hear that Harry Kane’s camp believe they have a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ with Daniel Levy for the England captain to leave Tottenham this summer.
Because no player, agent, rival manager or club executive who has ever conducted transfer business with the Spurs chairman has previously described Levy as behaving like a gentle man.
They will tell you it is impossible to get a contracted player out of Spurs by just bowing politely and using Queensberry Rules.
You simply have to go bare-knuckle and fight dirty.
At the start of the summer, Kane declared his desire to leave during that weird ‘Around with Alliss’ golf session with Gary Neville — a very modern version of handing in a transfer request.
Even then we wondered whether Kane — this one-club man, this ‘one of our own’, loyal as the day is long servant — could actually bring himself to go AWOL at Tottenham.
Kane is often portrayed as a Mary Poppins type but the England captain is a fiercely ambitious man, with elements of the selfishness every great striker needs, and with an increasing ability to employ the dark arts as a winner of free-kicks and penalties.
The idea that he would allow his peak years to drift past at a club which is sliding into mid-table irrelevance was always a fanciful one.
At lunchtime yesterday Spurs were drawn against Larne of Northern Ireland or Portuguese club Pacos de Ferreira in the play-off round of the third-tier Europa Conference League — and just two years after they contested the Champions League final.
WRONG DIRECTION
While it would probably have made little difference had Spurs successfully reappointed Mauricio Pochettino or recruited Antonio Conte to succeed Jose Mourinho, a farcical 72-day search to end up with Nuno Espirito Santo — sacked by Wolves — only confirmed Kane’s belief that his club was travelling in the wrong direction.
Just chuck a few basic stats around and it’s clear and obvious why Kane wants to join Manchester City.
Kane is 28 years old, has scored 221 goals in 336 games for Spurs, is a runner-up in the Champions League, Premier League, European Championships and the League Cup, without ever having won silverware.
Meanwhile, his 21-year-old England team-mate Phil Foden has started 29 Premier League games in his entire career and has already collected ten trophies at City.
Kane has received stick from some quarters for failing to ‘respect his contract’ and return to pre-season training yesterday — but such talk is out-dated, idealistic guff.
The striker may have three years remaining on his current deal but nobody in modern football believes contracts are anything other than bargaining tools — and nobody truly believes that loyalty exists from player to club, nor vice versa.
When Kane agreed to sign a six-year deal in 2018, Spurs were thriving under Pochettino.
They had finished third, second and third in the Premier League in successive seasons.
Kane was not hallucinating when he believed he could win the title at the club.
SPURS DOWNGRADE
But the quality of the squad was already being diluted before the peak of Pochettino’s reign arrived with a magnificent Champions League semi-final comeback against Ajax in 2019.
Five of the team who started the final against Liverpool have now left — Christian Eriksen plus the entire back four — and none of those departing have been upgraded.
Meanwhile, Dele Alli and Harry Winks have regressed, meaning Kane can hardly look around the dressing room and fail to realise that Spurs are far more ‘the Harry Kane team’ now than when Pep Guardiola labelled them as such in 2017.
He was the leading scorer (23) and top assist-maker (14) in the Premier League last term, in a team which finished seventh, 24 points behind City.
After eight years as a first-teamer, Kane has served his time and deserves a smooth exit, provided City pay the going rate for a world-class striker with diminishing resale value — which probably shouldn’t be far north of £100million.
Kane was supposed to report back for a Covid test yesterday morning before starting training today, so it’s possible he might simply be as sick as the rest of us at having swabs stuck up our noses and down our throats.
It remains to be seen whether he will continue his no-show but it was already understood Kane would not be lining up against City for Tottenham’s opening game on Sunday week.
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While Kane had a full-on summer, he would never normally agree to sit out such a big match.
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So the smart money is on Spurs and City striking a deal some time between August 16 and the closure of the transfer window on August 31.
Probably around five to midnight on the 31st, unless Levy suddenly decides to come over all gentlemanly.
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