As Tottenham’s trophy drought drags by means of one other barren season, Harry Kane has needed to accept statistical success rather than silverware.
While it might not rank fairly as excessive as being topped the main goalscorer within the historical past of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, Kane scrawled his title onto one other line within the file books in a weird 3-3 draw in opposition to Southampton on Saturday afternoon.
Rising above his former teammate Kyle Walker-Peters and Arsenal loanee Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Kane nodded Tottenham forward in opposition to the Saints together with his ninth headed aim of the Premier League season. Across the competitors’s 30-year historical past, solely the notorious Duncan Ferguson has ever recorded as many aerial objectives in a single season.
9 – Harry Kane has scored 9 headed objectives within the Premier League this season, equalling Duncan Ferguson’s single-season file within the competitors from 1997-98. Leap. pic.twitter.com/FAM1XbaIns
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) March 18, 2023
Big Dunc – as he was affectionately and reverently recognized – plundered his tally whereas enjoying for Everton in the course of the 1997/98 marketing campaign, netting solely two league objectives together with his toes that 12 months. Ferguson’s haul included a hat-trick in opposition to Bolton Wanderers in December 1997 made up totally of headers, the primary trio ever scored solely with a participant’s skull within the competitors’s historical past.
Peter Crouch holds the file for Premier League headers throughout a complete profession, rising above the group to transform 53 aerial balls. However, the 6’7 England worldwide’s greatest effort in a single marketing campaign was seven throughout his one Premier League season with Portsmouth in 2008/09.
Prior to the present marketing campaign, Kane’s private greatest for headed objectives stood at a modest six (2017/18). However, the workaholic striker’s aerial recreation acquired a big injection when Tottenham employed the set-piece coach Gianni Vio final summer time.
The former Unicredit banker supposedly has 4,830 useless ball routines filed away and labored with the Italian crew that beat Kane’s England within the last of Euro 2020. Now plotting for a similar aspect, Vio’s set-piece concoctions are answerable for 4 of Kane’s 9 headers this season.
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Against Southampton, Kane did not need to depend on a useless ball however owed the mismatch he positioned on the again submit to a dollop of misfortune for the Premier League’s backside aspect. Southampton misplaced each of their beginning centre-backs to harm inside the opening 35 minutes and Kane pulled onto the again shoulder of the extra unorthodox alternative.
Maitland-Niles’ versatility is a blessing and a curse however centre-back is one place he isn’t totally suited to, particularly when marking one of the vital aerially prolific centre-forwards in Premier League historical past. Kane had struggled in opposition to Jan Bednarek’s stringent man-marking earlier than the Pole limped off with a damaged rib however towered over Maitland-Niles, who stands a full 4 inches shorter than Tottenham’s talisman.
In reality, as Opta additionally identified, solely two different Premier League golf equipment have mixed for extra headed objectives than Kane this season, with Fulham (12) and Liverpool (ten) narrowly edging out Tottenham’s airborne artist.
Kane’s scoring supremacy has been sufficient to stretch past the Premier League period, as demonstrated when he surpassed the tally of Tottenham objectives that Jimmy Greaves racked up within the Sixties.
However, in terms of headers in a single season, Kane nonetheless has some method to go earlier than matching Dixie Dean. The Everton legend recorded a jaw-dropping tally of 40 (forty) headers whereas battering in 60 objectives in the course of the 1927/28 marketing campaign in response to Scott Murray’s historical past of the First Division, The Title.
Even after this season’s exploits, Kane’s profession tally of 39 Premier League headed objectives would not match Dean’s efforts throughout his annus mirabilis. Greaves’ Tottenham file had been deemed unbeatable till Kane got here alongside however Dean’s feats appear to be secure for now.
