By Gus Martin
Has harry Kane been underperforming since the start of the world cup?
Harry Kane is among the best strikers in the world and was voted tenth best overall player at this year’s Ballon D’Or. Playing for Tottenham Hotspurs, Kane has scored 153 goals for the club in 236 appearances. He won the Golden boot at this summer’s World Cup, leading England to fourth place. But since this his league form has been less prolific than previous years.
Since the start of this season Kane has scored nine league goals in 17 appearances. Though he did banish his August voodoo when he netted against Fulham in a 3-1 win. Kane has only netted one brace; against Huddersfield, and no hat-tricks. He has scored three of his nine goals from the penalty spot. Kane has scored just under one third of Spurs’ league goals this season (9/31). Kane leads the way with goals in the Spurs squad with Lucas Moura (5) and Érik Lamela (4) trailing.
By this stage in the 2017-18 season Kane had scored 11 goals. Scoring twice five times. At this point in the season Harry Kane had scored more than one third of Spurs’ goals (11/30). Having started 16 of the 17 matches.
In the 2016-17 season by this point of 17 league matches Kane had only scored 7 goals, just under one quarter of Spur’ total goals (7/29). But Kane missed 5 matches through injury so only started 12 times during the first 17 matches.
These statistics suggest that Harry Kane has been performing as good as previous years and when you compare his total goals in the Premier League there is an upwards trend.
| Season | Played | Goals |
| 2014–15 | 34 | 21 |
| 2015–16 | 38 | 25 |
| 2016–17 | 30 | 29 |
| 2017–18 | 37 | 30 |
| 2018–19 | 17 | 9 |
The years highlighted are when Kane won the Golden Boot in the Premier League. Despite scoring more goals than he had before, he was beaten to the award last season by Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah, who scored 32 goals. This year is currently a tight race for the golden boot as no one player has pulled away from the rest, with Salah and Aubameyang both on 10 with Kane and Raheem Sterling one goal behind, each having scored 9 goals so far.
Perhaps my original statement of “Has harry Kane been underperforming since the start of the world cup?” might be misjudged. It shows in the statistics that Harry Kane is performing just as well as he has previously but maybe it’s more that his performances have not been standing out. Which is in no way an issue as he is maintaining results and with Tottenham in the top three of the Premier League and through to the last 16 in the Champions League backing this up.