He might not score in August but, good Lord, Harry Kane makes up for it throughout the rest of the year.
In case you somehow hadn’t heard, Kane is really, really, really good at putting the ball into the back of the net.
The Spurs forward eclipsed Alan Shearer’s record for Premier League goals in a calendar year with a hat-trick in his side’s 5-2 win over Southampton on Boxing Day.
56 goals in all competitions this year, for both club and country, leaves him standing alone as the most prolific striker in all of Europe.
Defending In Numbers is a new Deezer Originals football podcast. Listen to the latest episode and subscribe to the podcast on Deezer and iTunes.
On this week’s episode of the Defending in Numbers podcast, Kane’s achievement was singled out for special attention and a fantastic point about the forward’s determination came up.
Guest Jake Entwistle said: “The thing I like about him is that, whenever there’s a record to be had, he doesn’t just think: ‘Oh I’m going to break that by one.’ He just smashes it.
“I can remember last year when everyone thought that Romelu Lukaku had the Golden Boot race sewn up but, with two games left, Kane went and scored seven goals and was like: ‘Nah, you can finish five goals behind me instead.'”
Kane has always been blessed with a seemingly innate ability to just find the perfect finish regardless of any pressure from defenders and while he understandably breaks out the usual cliches expected from elite footballers in 2017, in which he claims that the team’s cause matters more than his goalscoring stats, there’s no denying that he’s aware of his numbers and the records that stand between him and immortality.
It’s the tendency of the 24-year-old to rise to the occasion which has made him such an indispensable cog in Mauricio Pochettino’s Spurs machine.
And Kane’s stats, for a player his age, are becoming quite ludicrous at this stage.
“He’s scored eight hat-tricks in all competitions in 2017,” Entwistle added. “He’s now got eight hat-tricks in the Premier League itself which is as many as Thierry Henry managed in his career.
“Another thing I like about all the hat-tricks that he’s scoring is the fact that, in the Premier League in 2017, there have been 12 hat-tricks scored by Premier League players. Kane’s scored six of those.
“So he’s got as many hat-tricks as every other player in the Premier League combined in 2017. There’s no doubt that he’s just this phenomenal goalscorer.
“His all-around game has also improved massively. Against Southampton, there was one pass to Son which led to a penalty claim and it was so good. He’s also dribbling more now.
“But with the goal numbers, he’s broken the monopoly. He’s the first player since 2010, I think, to be top of this calendar year category who isn’t Messi or Ronaldo.”
Esteemed company indeed.
