The England global had an impressive breakout season last term in which he bagged 21 goals in 34 Premier League appearances for Tottenham.
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Pochettino was voicing his fears about Kane’s schedule and workload in early March, and the club versus country issue was a regular topic of his press conferences in the latter part of last season.
“He was on the bench against Qarabag but I think he needs to play to have the opportunity to score”, Pochettino said.
Kane’s shot accuracy has dipped from an impressive 58% last season to 33% this campaign and the striker is yet to contribute an assist on top of his lack of goals.
“But maybe at the end of the season he rested, went to the Euros, didn’t score at the Euros after three games, he came back late for pre-season and you need time to recover”. Sometimes you are not in the best scoring condition when you start to play and not score and your confidence goes down. It’s not easy to recover because it’s not only physical or mental. “But it’s true that maybe the summer did not help him”. “But this is a good experience for the future – to manage a young player like he is”.
And, given the Three Lions have already topped their qualifying group for next summer’s European Championships, there are suggestions he will pick an experimental squad for the matches against Lithuania and Estonia on October 9 and 12 respectively. “But it is too much of a rush to talk about bigger steps for him”. “But you can improve a lot in the bad moments and for him this is a very tough moment”. Ryan Mason remains sidelined with a knee problem while Alex Pritchard, Nabil Bentaleb and Mousa Dembele have ankle injuries and also miss out.
The homegrown hero introduced himself to the White Hart Lane faithful last season with an unprecedented 31 goals in all competitions, becoming an instant fans favourite in the process.
“It has settled down now”, Pochettino said. “We need to let him do his job”, the Spurs boss said. He didn’t do the pre-season so it’s hard.
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While praising Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger for his courage not to play his best available players against Tottenham, Merson asked a big question of Spurs in The Daily Star: “Will they ever beat Arsenal?” “For that we are a little bit sad because he needs more time to show his real quality”.
