The 2020-21 Premier League season appears to be wholeheartedly set on being one for the history books — one we never, ever dare to forget — which has Harry Kane thinking a bit outside the box, as it were: Why not Tottenham?
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Speaking in television interviews after Spurs’ painfully labored 1-0 victory away to Burnley on Monday, Kane was asked if Tottenham should be thinking of winning the PL title this season. He didn’t exactly straddle the fence as he answered — quotes from the BBC:“I think we are at a stage where we have been so close for so many years, a lot of us have been together for four or five years. The additions this year have been great and we are all getting more experienced. We know with the team we have got and the players we have got we can do something special. It’s making sure when you come to places like this you are fighting for every point and result. To bounce back and grind these results out, these are the results that count at the end of the season.”
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“It’s still early on. We need to take each game as it comes. I know it’s a cliche. We still have a lot to learn and build on but I think nights like this will give us a lot of confidence.”
Of course, non-Tottenham-supporting readers — and maybe even a few clad in lilywhite as well — will have laughed at reading “Why not Tottenham,” but if someone has to do it, the same question could also be asked of a half-dozen other sides with equal amounts of apathy. It’s by no means a guarantee that someone other than Liverpool or Manchester City will win — or even contest — the title this season, but aren’t we talking about precisely the kind of situation in which a Jose Mourinho-managed side could hugely overachieve and, as Kane put it, “do something special”?
It’s one thing to think they won’t do it, but it’s another thing to thing they can’t.
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Son Heung-min has scored as many PL goals (8) as Man City, Arsenal and Leicester City. Harry Kane has as many assists as his Tottenham teammate has goals — seven of which he provided for Son — and appears to be fully healthy and fit for the first time since his first major ankle injury back in 2016.
Put it this way: there’s a bunch of things that will have to go dramatically right for Tottenham to “do something special,” and through the first month and a half of the season, they’re all going the way they need them to go.