Harry Kane… I Can’t Even

Minutes after I’d decided not to write about the tedious Harry Kane situation in last night’s post, The Telegraph posted an article which is the closest thing I’ve seen to client journalism since the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg passed on Dominic Cummings messaging verbatim. I am absolutely staggered that Jason Burt would do this, he’s always been someone that I’ve respected and who has been pretty good on Spurs.

The Kanes have essentially, through The Telegraph, The Daily Mail and The Sun — i.e. the baddies — submitted a press release. It reads something like this: wahhh wahhh wahhh I want my own way and I’m not getting it wahhh wahhh wahhh. Cry more, Harry. Pathetic.

When you’re up against Daniel Levy and you are seen as the villain, you know something has gone wrong. Levy was public enemy number one for Spurs fans at the back end of the season and throughout much of the summer and there were even some continuing protests against him and ENIC outside the stadium on Sunday. This should have been an open goal for Kane PR-wise. The sort of tap-in he’d have sworn his daughter’s life on. Kane could have left on his terms, with his head held high and our fans largely understanding and even supporting his decision, his legacy in tact. But the Kanes have truly blown this in every conceivable way.

The latest grumbles don’t even stack up. He claims that at the end of the 2019/20 season, Levy told him that they’d go “all out” in pursuit of a trophy and Champions League qualification (hindsight lol) and, if we did not achieve that, he would be allowed to leave. But Levy’s not an idiot; on no planet would he allow Kane to leave for significantly under his market value.

It goes on, ‘It is why Kane also then felt empowered to conduct a Sky Sports interview with former England coach Gary Neville’. These are weasel words. This is gaslighting us, as fans — we have every right to feel upset about the interview because it was not a matter of empowerment, it was a matter of his greasing of the wheels. And, if we are to believe the rest of his side of the story, giving this interview before the season had even ended in order to try to ready the path for his move was not even necessary due to his ‘gentleman’s agreement’.

Then we move on to his late return. Kane ‘feels’ he’d been given an extra week away. The Sun’s version of the story (don’t worry, I used a proxy to read it) offers more detail. Of course, once again, it’s not Kane’s fault.

‘Kane believes he had permission from Levy to take an extra week’s holiday after spending time in the Bahamas and Florida. But it is claimed that two days into his stay, Kane was told new boss Nuno Espirito Santo wanted him back for pre-season training.’

‘CITY BREAK Harry Kane expects breakthrough in Man City transfer move before the weekend as Tottenham now resigned to losing striker’, The Sun, I’m not linking to it

Does he ‘feel’ he had permission, does he ‘believe’ he had permission, or did he ACTUALLY HAVE PERMISSION? Nuno Espirito Santo is hardly going to renege on an agreement Kane had made with Levy before he even arrived at the club, is he? This seems like a pretty clearcut issue — you either have a WhatsApp or an email telling you when to be back or you don’t. If you have it, if it is as straightforward as he makes it out to be, the story would have been shut down minutes after it was run with a firm statement (‘I’m here because I have permission from the club to be here’.) — not by an opaque Instagram statement days after it broke when the tabloid press had already got to work.

It is just so disappointing that this is playing out in public in this way, all orchestrated by Kane. The Neville interview, the article in The Sun by a gossip reporter who knows the Kanes, the Instagram statement and now this. Everything Kane is doing now is an attempt to force Spurs to lower their asking price; he’s out there wrecking his reputation to save the richest club on the planet a few quid at the expense of our club. By creating toxicity to the point where the club just wants rid of him, he thinks he can force Levy’s hand. We — the fans, his fans — are being punished when, ultimately, there is only one party in this deal who can decide if the transfer happens: when City make a fair offer, the deal gets done.

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