TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR STADIUM — Thierry Henry probably did not play against many defences as poor as the one Harry Kane faced as he notched his 175th and 176th Premier League goals, but that should not diminish the achievement of moving to sixth on the all-time list.
It would have been quite the moment of poetry had Kane added a 177th, drawing level with Frank Lampard, the man whose team were so extraordinarily generous in the space they afforded the Tottenham striker, but it was not quite to be.
Kane will overtake the former Chelsea midfielder at some point soon though and then he will set about ticking the names that are still above him on that list with Lampard and Henry in his rear-view mirror.
“Thierry was one of the greatest Premier League strikers we’ve seen so to go above him now is a nice little milestone,” Kane told Sky Sports afterwards.
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“Hopefully I can keep ticking off those names, keep helping the team with my goals and then we’ll see where we end up.”
Kane’s double featured “two fantastic, very different finishes” according to Teddy Sheringham, someone who knows a thing or two about goal-scoring.
His first was courtesy of a fine through-ball from Matt Doherty that put him through one-on-one with Jordan Pickford, his England team-mate who has probably faced a similar situation countless times before. Nevertheless, Kane shaped to curl the ball into the far corner only to drag it round to the left and beat the goalkeeper, ending what little resistance the Toffees had shown with a third first-half strike.
Premier League all-time top scorers
- Alan Shearer (260 goals)
- Wayne Rooney (208)
- Andrew Cole (187)
- Sergio Aguero (184)
- Frank Lampard (177)
- Harry Kane (176)
- Thierry Henry (175)
- Robbie Fowler (163)
- Jermain Defoe (162)
- Michael Owen (150)
His second was different although the provider Doherty was the same, swapping the driven pass for a dinked one that Kane volleyed left-footed in off the post.
Impressive as his finishing was though, it was Kane’s creation that really shone on this occasion. As the fulcrum for Tottenham’s counter-attacks, play swung around him as he would go from first to fifth-furthest player forward, from target to distributor. It was his pass that set in motion Heung-min Son’s goal and the Korean might have had a couple more courtesy of Kane’s vision had Pickford not been trying to atone for an earlier mistake.
“Sometimes you have to smell where the space is,” Kane added, asked about his tendency to drop deep.
“Obviously the manager will always set out his plan and I think over the last few years I’ve maybe been given a bit more of a free role in terms of being able to drop in there. Personally I like to sense the game and see where the space is.
“Some games this season you’ll see me stay high the whole game if I feel like that’s the right thing to do, run in behind, because I still feel like that’s a big part of my game. Tonight there were times I could drop and get the ball. Overall I think it’s just me evolving as a player.”
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Is this Kane’s “final form”? He certainly showed he still has the pace of his earlier days, when he scored, burning away from Michael Keane, although it was later revealed that the defender has been battling illness and would not have put his hand up to play were Everton not desperately short at centre-back.
That pace will not last forever either. Kane’s injury record speaks for itself and like some of England’s best players before him – David Beckham and Wayne Rooney spring to mind – there may be a natural shift away from the perimeters of the game and into more of a string-pulling role.
If Kane does make that move sooner rather than later though, what does it say of his ambitions to level up his career? He came close to leaving Spurs last summer as a striker, but as an attacking midfielder or deep-lying forward, does he hold the same appeal? Probably, especially when you consider Sunday’s Manchester derby featured zero strikers in either starting XI, but nevertheless Kane would be a different prospect if this is a more permanent switch.
A drift backwards would also probably rule out any chance of chasing down Alan Shearer’s mammoth total of 260 Premier League goals, a figure that increasingly looks like it might stand the test of time. Sergio Aguero, Andrew Cole and indeed Rooney might not survive Kane’s march especially if he keeps running into defences like Everton’s Swiss cheese model. They would keep any striker feeling young.
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