History Says Tottenham May be Without Harry Kane for a While
By Aaron Coe
One of the knocks on Harry Kane as he was developing for Tottenham was his inability to stay healthy and on the field. In his last two season before his breakout in 2014-15 Harry Kane missed 1/3 of his possibly playing opportunities with injury. While Harry Kane has had good seasons on the injury front, history tells us the Tottenham talisman may be out for a while and that is bad news for Spurs.
Early Injuries for Harry Kane
Harry Kane was last on loan from Tottenham in 2012-13 trying to develop to be part of the senior squad. The problem was for the first four months of the season, he could not get on the field with Norwich in the Premier League, according to transfermrkt.com.
Harry Kane played all of 3 matches over four months with the Canaries for a total of 135 minutes. Kane eventually moved on and managed to be available for Leicester City to finish the season in the Championship, even if he only scored 2 goals and had 1 assist on the season.
The next season 2013-14 Kane was back with Spurs but split his time between the youth team, the senior team, and the training room. Kane was excellent with the youth scoring 8 and assisting 5 in just 8 Premier League 2 matches that season. However, he also missed 12 matches with injury, thus only played in 19 total senior matches on the season.
Not including any DNP coaches decision situations – where Kane did not make the bench or leave the bench – Harry missed 12 of 31 matches or 39% of those available to him. Like Norwich the season before, Tottenham did well without Kane winning 7 of the 12 matches and dropping only 3. However, that was 2013-14 and Kane was a bit part player in the squad.
Harry Kane got Healthy and Hungry
We all know the breakout story of 2014-15 when Kane started scoring early in the Europa League and just kept on scoring as the season went on. Kane knocked in 31 goals and added six assists in that breakout season and missed a grand total of ZERO games with injury. Despite playing nearly 3,000 more senior minutes than he did the season before (3,690 min in 14-15 to 797 in 13-14) Kane did not miss a game hurt.
Kane went from playing less than 42 minutes per appearance to playing over 70 minutes per match and only missed six matches the entire season for Spurs – all coaches decisions. Providing a goal or assist at a rate just below 1 ever 100 minutes, Kane was on the scene.
2015-16 proved that Harry Kane was more than a 1 season wonder, as Spurs budding young star played in 50 matches and for a second straight season missed ZERO games with injury. Sitting only 3 matches – all coaches decision – and playing over 4000 minutes – (80.54/match) Kane again got the job done with 28 goals and 2 assists.
The totals per minute were lower 1 goal or assist every 134 minutes. This number was in line with his production from 2013-14 the difference was Kane played 80% more minutes and again missed zero matches due to injury.
What we saw was that one of the best abilities with Harry Kane in those first two breakout seasons was his availability. However, in three of the last four seasons Kane has missed double digit games with injuries and the team has performed progressively worse without him as the reliance on their English star has grown. So how have the injuries impacted Tottenham and Kane?