Kane’s cycle of fortune has become a physical problem

That difficult Harry Kane autumn period is here again, when earlyseason struggles tend to be followed closely by a winter renaissance and, come the new year, no one can recall why there was any concern at all about the greatest English goalscorer of his generation.

With the classic Kane cycle of fortune in mind, perhaps he will also hit form next year just as England embark on the group stages of the World Cup finals in Qatar at the end of November, although there was not much encouragement at Wembley on Tuesday night.

This was one of the Kane nights when he looks more like the player he might have been. That being the Kane on the other side of the mirror who never took his chance at Spurs and slipped off into a solid, if unremarkable career jousting with Football League centrehalves, ending up as a muchloved, if often frustrating, club legend at somewhere like MK Dons or Lincoln City.

As with his predecessor Wayne Rooney, when the physical conditioning is not quite at its optimum, so the other parts of Kane’s game crumble too. Sooner or later one supposes that the stars will align and Kane will register the first of many Premier League goals and assists this season.

He was top for both in the league last season and, as such, there can be no arguing with the numbers. Kane coming good is a staple of the early Premier League season, an annual metamorphosis which never quite loses its capacity to astound as the chrysalis splits and the great goalscorer emerges. The only question being why he needs to go through it every time.

The great Spurs years of the modern era were under Mauricio Pochettino and his assistant Jesus Perez, who pushed Kane physically with an intense style of training that has never been replicated since their departure. The high points were arguably in those two seasons of 2016-17 and 2017-18, when Kane’s scoring was at an astonishing level. He was a much younger man, but also one who trained differently under a different manager.

In the Champions League before Christmas that season, Spurs had a striker who dominated the defences of Real Madrid and Borussia

Dortmund. Kane was at his best as a goalscorer and creator of goals when he was in the kind of condition that made him impossible to stop physically. He took up better positions. He won headers. He won the ball back when his team lost it.

Those parts of his game – duels won every 90 minutes, recoveries, headers won – have remained steady, like the goals and assists over the past three seasons, until the fall-off in the current campaign.

He has found ways of coping with the change in training regime as he has got older. But on nights like Tuesday he can still seem a long way off. Even under Pochettino, Kane has always started slowly, and his delayed return to training – and quarantine – this summer after a holiday seems to have extended that period. Kane was at pains to point out on Tuesday night that he has already scored nine goals this season. The quibble being that they have come against the likes of NS Mura, Pacos de Ferreira and Andorra. No one is doubting that the eye for goal is there. The question, as he gets older, is what kind of Kane one might get – the great striker or the striker still playing his way into great form?

The Pochettino regime was unrelenting in its conditioning of Spurs players and Kane was arguably its greatest beneficiary. He remains the kind of player who prepares thoroughly for training and stays behind afterwards to practise penalties and free-kicks. It is the part in between that is the key component and one wonders if

Nuno Espirito Santo and his staff can guide a 28-year-old star of the game back to the kind of physical shape that launched his career under Pochettino.

The volatility of form goes throughout the Spurs team. They can be good in one half, as against Chelsea, and then suffer a big falling-off after the break. For Kane, especially with England, there is much less scope now in his career for those fallow periods. Come the World Cup in December next year, he cannot afford the kind of form that saw the Euro 2020 final in July largely pass him by.

He remains a great goalscorer – just not a great goalscorer all the time. At the level at which he operates, the standard is unforgiving. Karim Benzema and Kylian Mbappe turned around the Nations League final for France largely with their match-winning prowess. If England are to succeed, it is that they will need from their captain and leading scorer, at times when the margins are very fine.

For his own sanity, Kane has developed ways of dealing with the pressure, and his quiet resolution has seen him through challenging times. “No need to panic,” he said after the draw with Hungary. “I am confident in myself, confident in the teams I play in.” He was, Kane said, “in a good place” with the suggestion that he is over the Manchester City transfer that never happened, and the sense that the Premier League champions never pushed that hard for him.

Kane will believe that he is scrutinised too much. Others will feel it is simply not enough, and that his substitution at Wembley as England chased a winner was overdue. There will be a game soon when he looks like the Kane of 2017 and 2018 and a lot of the doubts vanish. The question is whether he will be able to summon that form when it matters most, rather than hoping it simply arrives on time.

Come the World Cup, he cannot afford the form that saw the Euro 2020 final largely pass him by