Spurs’ Harry Kane Update: He’s Still Good

Despite the buzz about him being a one-season wonder early in the season, Spurs’ Harry Kane has well and truly proven his quality.

The two goals he scored on Sunday against Bournemouth take him to 21 for the campaign, enough to make him the leading contender for the Premier League’s Golden Boot come the end of the season.

What makes that record all the more impressive is the fact that the England international seemed to stutter at the beginning of the season. It took until September 26th’s 4-1 win over Manchester City for him to score, and then another four matches to do so again.

That latter match was Spurs’ 5-1 dismantling of Bournemouth, with Kane’s hat-trick making up the bulk of the goals. He would go on to score in each of the next three matches in all competitions, and would not go more than three matches without scoring at least one goal right up through Spurs’ 2-1 win at City in mid-February.

That that goal was only a penalty, and that scoreless matches followed it, made some speculate that another dry spell might keep him out of contention for lead scorer this season, especially with Leicester City’s Jamie Vardy and Everton’s Romelu Lukaku also in the race.

A goal against Arsenal then two each against Aston Villa and Bournemouth silenced all the doubters however. With seven matches left in the season and a two goal buffer above Vardy, it’s easy to imagine Kane becoming the first Englishman to earn the Premier League’s Golden Boot since Sunderland’s Kevin Phillips did so in 1999/2000 and the first Spurs player to do so since Teddy Sheringham in the league’s inaugural season in 1992/93.

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Even if Kane doesn’t score again and missed out on the chance to make history, he’ll have still done something impressive. Last season’s 30 goal haul in all competitions was remarkable considering Kane’s age and general lack of hype outside the club previously. This season, though, proves that that was no fluke. He’s as reliable a striker as any team in Europe could hope to have.

What’s more, he’s been able to do so by subtly adjusting his game. His sheer potency last season was criticized at the time for being unsustainable. He took 110 non-penalty shots over 2,582 minutes of Premier League football, of which 45 were on target. Of those latter shots, 19 were converted as goals. That’s a conversion rate of 42% compared to attempts on goal.

To illustrate how exceptional that rate actually was, consider Luis Suárez for Liverpool in 2013/14. He won the Golden Boot that year, having scored 31 times in 33 appearances for the Reds – none of which were penalties. He managed a whopping 181 shots that season, 81 were on target. That leaves him with a conversion rate of 38%, meaning that the player responsible for arguably the most impressive goal-scoring season in recent years actually converted less frequently than Kane did last season.

Kane and Spurs knew that they could not simply rely on such a return again for another season, and therefore went to work changing how and where Kane took his shots. So far this season, Kane’s played 2,741 minutes in the league and has taken 123 non-penalty shots, 58 on goal. His 16 non-penalty goals thus result in a more modest conversion rate of 28%.

Broken down by minutes-per-shot, Kane’s roughly stayed steady over the two seasons. In 2014/15 he took a shot once every 23.5 minutes, and so far this term he’s done so one every 22.3 minutes. It’s in his shots on target, though, where he really bridges the gap created by his more down-to-earth conversion rate. While last season he managed a shot on target once every 57.4 minutes on average, this season he’s doing it a much faster rate: 47.3 minutes.

You can see how he’s accomplished this by looking at how he’s picked his shots this season compared to last. There’s been a noticeable uptick in the amount of shots he takes in the opposition penalty area – 2.4 shots per 90 minutes this season compared to 2.0 last season – and a decrease in the amount of shots he’s taken per 90 minutes outside the area – 1.4 this season compared to 1.6 last.

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He’s been allowed to find shots closer to goal due in large part to the strength and tenacity of the attacking midfield trio behind him. They create more chances in advantageous areas and this Kane has the luxury of being able to take chances closer to goal. It’s resulted in him maintaining his goal-scoring form despite statistically falling from the heights of last season.

Sustaining that connection between Kane and his fellow attacks is vital for the rest of this season and beyond. He is an objectively good player, but he’s made even better by his teammates and Pochettino’s system as a whole.