IT’S A FINE BROMANCE
Harry leads Spurs’ band of brothers to glory Poch claims he is in love’with strike hero Kane
TO TOTTENHAMOTT boss Mau Mauriciouri Pochettino says s he is “in love” with his go goal-machineoal striker Harry y Ka Kane.
After seeingsee the Spurs and England forwf forward score a double to defeat batb battling West Ham, Pochettino co couldn’t conceal his admiration for his 24-year-old hitman. “Harry is not only the best English striker he is one of the best in the world,” said Pochettino.
“It’s too hard for me to find the right words to describe him because in the last three seasons I am telling you how great he is.
“I am in love with him like the fans are in love and his team-mates are in love with him. Not only because he scores goals but because how he is – professional, humble and a very good example in football today being like this.
“He keeps all the values that managers like me appreciate a lot and that is why I am in love with him.”
Hammers boss Slaven Bilic was swooning too – despite seeing Kane pile on the misery for his side after three successive clean sheets. Bilic said: “The best compliment I can give him is that our three centre-backs – Jose Fonte, Winston Reid and Angelo Ogbonna had really good games.
“They were mostly up against him and Dele Alli and they didn’t really have a bad game.
“But still Kane was using the situations and basically he decided the game for them – and my centre-backs were good. So that tells you everything.
“If there are 10 great strikers he’s up there. If there are two of them he probably isn’t but if there are five or 10 then he definitely is there because he is doing it week in week out now... apart from August.” Pochettino was not happy his new £24million fullback Serge Aurier was sent off.
Fierce
The 69th-minute dismissal came for a second yellow card in a short space of time, both for fouling West Ham striker Andy Carroll.
It left Spurs to survive a fierce last 20 minutes of pressure from West Ham with the Argentinian saying: “The first yellow wasn’t a yellow card. I was disappointed. He got the second yellow card and then the red card.
“This is football and this can happen sometimes. But I’m happy with him, all his team mates are happy too. He has settled in well.
“It was a tough game but overall we deserved it. We were better. The emotion of the last few minutes when they tried to score and dominated okay, but we were better over the 90 minutes.
“We played well, competed and fought against a difficult team in a derby when you know the game is more than just three points.”
Bilic couldn’t fault the effort of his stars who had to reorganise after Michail Antonio went off early in the game with a groin injury.
He said: “It was very even at 0-0. It is very hard to come back after 2- 0. Before the first goal we had lots of attacking opportunities but we didn’t use it.
“Then we make a mistake and their finish was clinical. The first half was nowhere near 2-0.
“We came back and after the red card we pressed them. In the end we came to 3-2 but there wasn’t enough time for more but we showed good pride to come back.”