Harry Kane may have to leave Tottenham to achieve more, says Paul Merson

Published on: 31 March 2020

If Harry Kane wants to win stuff, he may have to leave Tottenham. 

In his column famous football expert Paul Merson said:

Will Kane get six or seven chances a game playing the way Jose Mourinho does? I don't think so. For me that's what he needs to weigh up.

He loves scoring goals, he wants to play for an attacking team, but I don't see that happening next season, if Mourinho makes it tight and starts playing the way that made him one of the best managers of all time, and I think that's what Kane is weighing up.

Kane will be looking at Mourinho's history, and mark my words, next year, or whenever football begins again, Mourinho's playing style will be different. Spurs won't be letting in two or three goals per game, that's for sure. Jose will be making sure he gets that right.

The hardest thing in football is to create a team that scores goals one end and doesn't let them in at the other. It's impossible. But Mourinho has done that in parts over the years.

So far at Spurs it's been gung-ho, with the 3-2s, your 5-2s, 4-3s, but that isn't Mourinho deep down.

And what that means is that Harry Kane won't be getting five chances a game any longer, and he will have to weigh that up because he loves scoring goals.

I don't think Kane will want to be in a team where he is getting 10 goals a season, even if Spurs are further up the league.

How has Jose Mourinho managed to play with big-name strikers before? The likes of Didier Drogba at Chelsea and Zlatan Ibrahimovic at Manchester United were focal point players, where you drop the ball into them and they have players running off them.

Harry Kane doesn't want to be that. Kane wants to get involved in a different way, get down the channels, drop short and shoot. He's an intelligent footballer, and I don't think he will want to be a focal point player.

It's a hard one for Kane, because the grass is always greener. He plays every week at Tottenham; if he goes three games without scoring, he plays the fourth game. If he goes five games without scoring, he plays the sixth game.

If he goes to another club, and he goes a few games without scoring, he might not play the next game. He has to weigh these types of things up.

Tottenham was perfect for Kane under Mauricio Pochettino; they played nice, free-flowing attacking football, they were nice to watch, but they didn't win anything.

I hope that winning trophies is on Kane's mind. At the end of the day, these players earn enough to not work another day's worth when their career is over. The money shouldn't come into it too much.

You weigh your career up on how many medals you've got. It's all well and good having 17 toilets in your house, but if you haven't won a medal, what does it mean?

When Gary Neville's achievements come up at the bottom of the screen on Sky Sports, it doesn't say how much money he has or how big his house is, how many bathrooms, how many bedrooms, how many cars. It says eight Premier League titles, three FA Cups and two European Cups. That's what it's about.

He also has to think whether he wants to become the top Premier League goalscorer of all time. I don't see that happening if he stays at Tottenham under Mourinho. He's on 136 at the age of 26, with Alan Shearer on 260.

He has to score at least 50 goals in the next two seasons to stand a chance of reaching that, because he isn't reaching those numbers in his 30s - football isn't like that anymore. I don't see him doing that with Mourinho as manager. He needs to leave himself with an average of 10 to 15 goals a season in his early 30s.

So if he wants to break the record, I think he needs to move on, too. But that would have to be to a Premier League team, so there is a lot for Harry Kane to think about.

But overall, you want to see Harry Kane winning trophies, for his brilliance on the pitch.

Source: m.allfootballapp.com

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