Kane trusts Levy on last-gasp Spurs buys
Backs club chairman to deliver on deadline day Striker admits transfer market has gone ‘crazy’
Harry Kane is the one star at Tottenham Hotspur whom Daniel Levy can be sure he will never have to sell and as the clock ticks down to the transfer deadline at 11pm today, the club’s leading striker says that they trust their famously parsimonious chairman to do his best work in these final hours.
Levy prefers to wait until the summer window’s frantic last hours to strike his best deals, with Jermain Defoe, Hugo Lloris, Rafael van der Vaart all arriving late over the years, as well as Moussa Sissoko, Ryan Nelsen and Louis Saha.
It is a strategy that Levy prefers despite evidence that Spurs start the season badly as a consequence, and there could be more this time with deals for Ross Barkley and Serge Aurier possible, after Juan Foyth signed from Estudiantes yesterday. Speaking this week at St George’s Park, the England striker, again without a goal in August, said that he would not be watching the final hours of deadline day, just as he had decided to give Match of the Day a miss after that 1-1 draw with Burnley – “I was watching the golf ”. He said that this transfer window had been “crazy”, although, as the man who claims he never thinks of leaving Spurs, he does not give it too much consideration.
“To be honest, I don’t have it [transfer deadline day] on. Of course, the gaffer will get in who he wants. I’ll be interested to see who we get in but I’m not that interested in other teams. I’m focused on Tottenham. Daniel likes to do it on the last day to get the best deal, but we just have to wait and see.
“Daniel is a great businessman, the way he runs the club, the new training ground, the new stadium. He does what he wants to do. Some chairmen are different. But he does what he does and feels it’s the best way to help out the team.”
Kane was at pains to point out that he has an agent to negotiate his own contracts with Levy and, as a consequence, has never dealt with the Spurs chairman across the table. Nevertheless, the 24-year-old said that he appreciated the changes he has witnessed in his own time at the club, the new training ground at Enfield and the new stadium rising from the demolished stands of White Hart Lane. “He’s been around for a long time, he’s great for our club, he runs it in a good way. The facilities we’ve got now are second to none. I don’t deal with him face to face so I wouldn’t know how intimidating he is.”
Kane is expected to lead the line for England against Malta tomorrow night, and then three days later at Wembley against Slovakia, in two World Cup qualifiers that could see England all the way to the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Does he ever think about how much he would go for? “Sometimes my mates say, ‘Wonder what you’d be worth?’ But that’s not something that’s on my mind. If I was someone thinking about moving then, of course, I’d think about that but, as you know, I’m fully committed to Spurs in the future.” Kane is a staunch advocate of the transfer window closing before the start of the season. “It [the window] has been crazy, even from a player’s point of view. With the Neymar situation, the money involved has just changed and players are going for a lot more than they may have done before that transfer.
“I have spoken about it before that it would be better for the window to close before the season, to help teams settle, and also on an international basis, rumours are going around, but that’s the way the game is going – if it was shut off before the start of the season, it would help. Everyone could focus on the season, without players having to worry about being sold or moving up north or down south.”
Although he did not see it himself, he was told about Alan Shearer’s Match of the Day theory on the innate belief strikers have that the next goal is coming. “That’s the life of a striker,” Kane said. “You will go through spells when you will miss chances; you go through spells when you get deflections that go in and everything you touch turns to gold.” As for Malta, the game falls on Sept 1. “We’ve all had a little joke about it,” Kane said. “I should be good to go now.”