KANE'S POTENTIAL KNOWS NO BOUNDS

Tottenham's Harry Kane netted a fine brace to put Arsenal to the sword in this afternoon's North London derby giving Spurs a vital 2-1 victory and a boost in the race for a top four finish. The England under-21 captain's potential seems limitless at the moment.

D. Ray Morton, 7th February 2015.

Harry Kane celebrates next to teammate Érik Lamela after netting against Arsenal this afternoon

They chant "he's one of us" in the stands, he is scoring goals by the hatful and he just helped Tottenham to victory in the North London derby but some still doubt whether Harry Kane is the real deal. In a game which Spurs controlled for the most part, Kane was the key difference with two clinical second half finishes after Arsenal took the lead early on thanks to a somewhat fortuitous opener which fell to the otherwise quiet Mesut Özil.

Kane's first was a classic poacher's goal being in the right place at the right time after David Ospina parried an effort in the 56th minute. The second was an Alan Shearer-esque header with only four minutes of normal time remaining, another late winner for Tottenham which seems to be their habit this season.

Last season, Kane was only recognised as a back-up striker with no outstanding talents other than the aerial ability his 1.90m frame offers him. In 2015, he is now starting to look like a frontman with no obvious weaknesses. He has come on in leaps and bounds and a teammate of his last season may be the inspiration for that: Gareth Bale.

Talking to Standard Sport last November, Kane said about Bale: "After training he would always be there, setting up the mannequins, taking free-kicks and working on his finishing. You saw what happened: he became an unbelievable finisher from outside the box and from free-kicks."

He went on to say: "If you practice, the rewards are there. It's very inspiring. Every footballer wants to play at the very top level and that's what I want to do here at Spurs and make my mark for the club. That's why I work at these aspects of my game."

Kane is modelling his game around Tottenham's former hero, Gareth Bale

And it is clear that the hours he is putting in in training is beneficial. At this point, he looks like an absolute banker to get in the England squad. If anything, his exclusion would draw hostility as he is undoubtedly England's most on-form striker. With Liverpool's Daniel Sturridge having an injury-ravaged season and Wayne Rooney playing in midfield for Manchester United, Kane seems like a natural spearhead for the national side where he can be supplied by England's ample selection of pacey wingers.

Of course it is not just Kane who deserves credit for masterminding Tottenham's win over their bitter rivals. Mauricio Pochettino set his side up perfectly, pressing Arsenal throughout and preventing clear cut chances. Whatever he is doing with them in training is working because Spurs are now one of the most feared teams in the Premier League for scoring late winners, a reputation previously held by Sir Alex Ferguson's Manchester United.

So headaches for Arsenal fans and extra misery because it was inflicted by Tottenham's resident folk hero. This might be setting a pattern for future North London derbies. Harry Kane can excel at White Hart Lane and can eclipse the likes of Teddy Sheringham, Gary Lineker and who knows, maybe even Jimmy Greaves.

HAVE CHELSEA SEWN UP THE EPL ALREADY?

Chelsea avoided defeat and tormented their greatest challengers for the Premier League title on Sunday. Despite conceding late on, you get the feeling that this will be José Mourinho's year and the other sides are noticing it too. Here are some thoughts on this weekend's matches in England and on the continent.

Frank Lampard may have reluctantly saved Manchester City's skin at the Etihad but Chelsea fans should not be upset as avoiding defeat and dampening their opponents' spirits was key

Chelsea manager José Mourinho must be a rather pleased man. Pleased, that is, in spite of his former player, Frank Lampard, denying him a win at the Etihad in the Blues' visit to Manchester City. Thing is, a victory would have sealed the Premier League title race shut. A draw is fine, however, especially the manner in which it was achieved. City were desperate and even resorted to weak criticisms of their opponents after the game. Manuel Pellegrini insisted that Chelsea play like Stoke! A classic case of sour grapes, the Chilean perhaps frustrated at the signs that this City side has lost that bit of hunger that delivered them the league title last season.

Manuel Pellegrini's post-match comparison of Chelsea and Stoke was both outdated and inaccurate

Onto Manchester United. To anyone that watched it, my words here will not even begin to describe the autrocity that befell them. Cruising to a 3-1 away win at little Leicester City, United's woeful defence conspired to throw away a commanding lead and ended up losing 5-3 in what was arguably the most entertaining game of the season so far. Attacking play ruled the roost and United's attempt to put the game away fizzled pathetically. Young Tyler Blackett was screamed at by captain Wayne Rooney after conceding the equaliser. Rooney had been the one who lost the ball to set up the goal. His confidence damaged, Blackett was later sent off for a professional foul in the penalty area, one of two United conceded on the day. It was a mess all-round, credit Leicester, as Louis van Gaal appeared shell-shocked answering questions post-match.

Tyler Blackett's confidence must be crushed after being screamed at by Wayne Rooney, giving away a penalty and getting sent off. A bad day at the office overall for the youngster

Liverpool also lost out. This time to West Ham at the Boleyn Ground. Without Daniel Sturridge, they are missing something and the players Brendan Rodgers has signed in order to cover the Luis Suárez void are hardly filling their fans with confidence. Good manager that he is, some feel he got a tad lucky to have inherited the world class Uruguayan and perhaps only achieved last season's second place finish thanks the transitional nature of the campaign where many top teams changed managers.

Bubbles in your face: Brendan Rodgers will have to rethink things after going down 3-1 at West Ham

Tottenham flopped in front of their own fans in a very AVB-like performance in their 1-0 defeat to West Bromwich Albion. It was back to sterile possession, moving the ball slowly from side-to-side without any real aggression. This pattern of play is still rooted in the Spurs squad despite two managerial changes since André Villas-Boas was shown the door.

Mauricio Pochettino showed more passion than his players at White Hart Lane on Sunday

North London rivals Arsenal had more joy when they put away plucky Aston Villa thanks to a barrage of three goals in the space of no more than seven or eight minutes. Mesut Ozil was back to his best playing in his preferred central role though many will still write him off as a flat track bully no matter how Arsene Wenger portrays him.

Mesut Ozil and Danny Welbeck did enough to keep their critics quiet against Aston Villa

 

Across Europe, there were goals galore in Spain as clásico rivals Real Madrid and Barcelona both recorded high scoring victories away to Deportivo and Levante respectively. Real won 8-2 thanks to a storming hat-trick from Cristiano Ronaldo and Barca notched up five and kept a clean sheet in a game where Lionel Messi starred in something of a playmakers' role despite missing a penalty. In Italy, Juventus showed they are still the team to beat despite a change in management. They visited Milan at San Siro and came away with a 1-0 win thanks to a Carlos Tevez strike.

Lionel Messi has become creator-provider...penalty misser under Luis Enrique in his deeper playmaker role

 

Without Champions League or internationals and only minor cup competitions to be competed in this mid-week, this gives teams an ample opportunity to refresh and rethink now that the major European domestic campaigns are starting to take shape. We are not too far off October, the month before the sack race. Giddy up!

POCHETTINO'S START AT TOTTENHAM GOES UNDER THE RADAR

Mauricio Pochettino's reign as Tottenham's new manager has been very low key so far. With the club needing to sell in order to buy new talent, much work is needed in the month ahead for them to be a top four-challenging team.

 

D. Ray Morton, 20th July 2014.

Mauricio Pochettino has kept a low profile as Tottenham manager but will need to make strides in the transfer market if they are to challenge for those lucrative Champions League places

When Tim Sherwood's tenure as Tottenham boss ran down towards the end of last season, three candidates emerged to be the club's next permanent manager: Frank de Boer, Louis van Gaal and Mauricio Pochettino. All three were interested in the job at different stages but Daniel Levy and the Tottenham board opted for the latter based on his stellar work at Southampton. De Boer remains at Ajax Amsterdam and Louis van Gaal was handed the Manchester United reins boosted by having a fine World Cup guiding the Dutch national team to bronze medals. Some United fans are even talking about challenging for the Premier League title. One wonders whether such optimism would be at White Hart Lane had van Gaal gone there, keep in mind that Spurs did finish five points ahead of the Red Devils last season.

It is fair to say that Pochettino has operated under the radar so far. His goal is to finish in the top four but he must rebuild a flawed squad and also has a lengthy Europa League campaign ahead of him, something which Manchester United do not need to worry themselves with. To assemble this squad, he needs to sell to buy. Levy will not allow the free spending which backfired for the club last summer after the sale of Gareth Bale to Real Madrid. Ben Davies, Swansea's capable left-back, will likely be their first signing of the summer for a fee of around €12.75m funded by the sale of Jake Livermore to Hull City for €10m.

Ben Davies (foreground) could be Tottenham's first signing of the summer

The real conundrum is, who to sell and who to keep. Jan Vertonghen, Hugo Lloris and Érik Lamela are their three most in-demand players but the club really need to keep the first two as they are key members of the first-team squad. Lamela is young, Argentine like Pochettino and has potential but had an awful first season at White Hart Lane troubled by injuries and homesickness. The option is there to offload him or try and rekindle the abilities he demonstrated in Italy with Roma. Then there is a list of squad members who can easily be disposed with should Spurs be able to attract buyers: Paulinho, Roberto Soldado, Emmanuel Adebayor, Lewis Holtby, Kyle Naughton, Andros Townsend, Michael Dawson, Gylfi Sigurðsson and Sandro can all leave if suitable offers come in. Getting rid of a good few of those should raise a decent enough kitty to reinvest in the squad.

Some movement in the market is now crucial as desperation can rear its ugly head if business is left too late. No doubt technical director, Franco Baldini, is busy behind the scenes trying to close deals and the sooner they get done, the better. With North London rivals Arsenal having already signed one of the stars of the World Cup in Alexis Sánchez, Tottenham will have make a few moves in order to build a bit of much-needed belief around the club.

SUÁREZ TO BARCELONA REPRESENTS A STRANGE PIECE OF BUSINESS

D. Ray Morton, 11th July 2014.

Will this be club football's dream strike force next season?

Next Wednesday, Barcelona will confirm the signing of Liverpool's controversial Uruguayan striker Luis Suárez. The fee is expected to be near the figure of €94m making Suárez one of the most expensive players of all-time. Cristiano Ronaldo's move to Real Madrid hit similar numbers though Gareth Bale's move to the same club is thought be somewhere between €91-100m.

Meanwhile, Barcelona have offloaded Chilean attacker Alexis Sánchez to Arsenal for only €38m meaning that there is a €56m gap in value between he and Suárez. With Suárez two years older than the Chilean, canny followers of the transfer market may raise an eyebrow or two in surprise. Is the tempermental Suárez really that much better? Though the Uruguayan has demonstrated great scoring prowess over the past few seasons at Liverpool, at twenty-seven, Suárez is at his peak whilst Sánchez can only get better. Sánchez also comes out of the World Cup with an improved reputation having put in some great performances for Chile. Though Suárez starred against England, his bite at Giorgio Chiellini ended his tournament in disgrace.

Arsenal jumped at the opportunity to sign Alexis Sánchez with Barcelona eager to sell to free up funds for the Suárez deal
 

Liverpool will obviously need a replacement. Recent reports have linked them with Real Madrid's Karim Benzema, a move which may or may not happen depending on whether the Madrid club want to go after Monaco's Colombian pair, Radamel Falcao and James Rodríguez. Alternate options are the precocious talent that is Belgian teenager Divock Origi or Benfica's Serbian attacker Lazar Markovic.

Looking at the Suárez deal, it represents a considerable risk for Barcelona. He will have to serve his ban which stretches well into the beginning of the season without even the opportunity to train with his new team-mates. With Neymar out injured with a significant back injury, Barça will have to start the season with only one of their first-choice attackers, Lionel Messi, who will be coming off the back of an entire World Cup's worth of matches. Should the Catalan club start the season sluggishly, there will be higher expectations of Suárez once he becomes available.

The potential front three of Neymar-Messi-Suárez looks great on paper and represents something of a South American dream attack force. Will they click? Messi will want to remain in his central false 9 role and Neymar prefers to play on the left but is the right side of a front three the best position for Suárez to occupy? At Liverpool, he would often play centrally or on the left but it was Raheem Sterling who usually played on the right when the Merseysiders played with a front three. It seems strange to spend so much on a player if he is to be played slightly out of position. Suárez is highly adaptable and will not kick up a fuss but it represents something of a conundrum for new manager Luis Enrique. The outgoing Sánchez's preferred role was that right winger slot that Suárez will be fitted in to.

With this enormous outlay, Barcelona have gone back to challenging Real Madrid directly with their wallet. Expectations are massive and finishing the season without a major title, either La Liga or the Champions League, will represent a failure considering the investment they have made. Suárez is on a five-year deal and the Catalans should expect to win many trophies in that time provided he lives up to the hype. A fascinating season ahead but whether Suárez is the upgrade to make Barcelona the greatest again is up for question.

CALLS FOR CHANGE IN PENALTY/DISMISSAL RULES ARE IDIOTIC

CALLS FOR CHANGE IN PENALTY-DISMISSAL RULES ARE IDIOTIC

D. Ray Morton, 27th February 2014

As two English teams slumped to humbling defeats in the Champions' League last week, bizarre calls have been made for a change in the rules of the game when it comes to professional fouls which lead to red cards and penalties. Whether it was domestic bias (as it probably was considering we haven't heard any continental complaints) or something else that brought about this nonsense, it doesn't make any sense!

Martin Demichelis was rightly red carded for his awfully-timed challenge on Lionel Messi in the Manchester City vs. Barcelona fixture nine days ago and Arsenal's Wojtech Szesney, though one could be more sympathetic in his case, clearly brought down Bayern Munich's Arjen Robben the following night to earn himself a sending off of his own. Demichelis had to go. Messi had skinned him, was baring down on goal and looked guaranteed to score when his lumbering compatriot ruthlessly hacked him down in a very cynical move made to look as if he had been attempting a fair challenge.

Demichelis is no fool and has been round the block long enough to know he had no chance of winning the ball cleanly from Messi at that angle. The foul may have started ever so slightly outside the box but within the letter of the law, it is entirely up to the referee's discretion whether to award a free-kick or a penalty. In this case, however, one would suspect the speed of the action lead to the penalty decision. Messi slotted home the spot-kick and some English viewers blabbed about how the game was "ruined as a contest".

What a stupid notion and what ignorance of the game as a whole. When a team concedes a penalty and has a player sent off, yes they are at a disadvantage but that is the point! You get punished for cynicism or clumsiness as the last line of defence and that's how football should be. Any change in that law would bring about an unworkable system where oafish defenders are somehow rewarded for their own shortcomings. To say that the game gets ruined as a spectacle is to suggest that getting a player sent off is the worst thing in the world. This is not five-a-side where losing a player means losing 20% of your team. A good side can recover from having a man sent off as famously demonstrated by Barcelona against Chelsea in 2009 when Andres Iniesta's last minute heroics trumped the Londoners in the dying minutes after Eric Abidal had been, incorrectly at the time, sent off beforehand. With so many close calls in a match, how can a sending off ruin a contest more than say, a goal being ruled offside when it was not?

As mentioned, one could sympathise with Szesney to some extent, as his foul was more about getting the timing wrong instead of ruthlessly chopping down an opponent. That said, is there a better way to deal with the offence? It was a clear goalscoring opportunity and the officials are there to punish wrongful actions, not judge whether the offender's intentions were honest or not. Referees are already like incapable teachers with too many kids in their class so let's not make it any harder or more confusing for them. Face it City and Arsenal fans, this is a classic case of sour grapes.

MOYES STORMS OUT OF PRESS CONFERENCE AHEAD OF ARSENAL CLASH

It appears as though David Moyes' media handling has gone from parroting banal clichés about anything from stability and rebuilding to outright anger and the display of an increasingly cold shoulder. In yesterday's press conference in the lead-up to tonight's crucial fixture against Arsenal at the Emirates, Moyes ended the conversation prematurely, snubbing a perfectly valid query about Manchester United's mid-season trip to Dubai which begins on Thursday. Moyes' glare from the offset indicated to all present that this was not going to be one of those smiles-and-sunshine chats. He is starting to feel the pressure after a run of poor results that has left them 21 points worse off than they were this time last season.

Indeed, Moyes was asked about that very statistic to which he replied that he was at Everton last season in an attempt to demonstrate that the question was irrelevant. Irrelevant it is not however, as there have been no personnel changes other than the retirement of Paul Scholes and the recruitment of Marouane Fellaini and Juan Mata, two players that should theoretically improve on what they had. Claiming that his players have been "terrific" and that other Premier League rivals have made "a lot of improvements" masks the reality of the situation that Moyes, like Jose Mourinho at Chelsea and Manuel Pellegrini at Manchester City, had to start from scratch this season as new managers. Tottenham and Everton have also had managerial changes so the only two teams in the top seven that have maintained any stability have been Arsenal and Liverpool.

Arsenal come into tonight's fixtures with questions being raised over the form of Mesut Ozil. Arsene Wenger wants his playmaker to find another level and shake himself out of this bad patch. Ozil, though immensely talented, has often come across as a fair weather player in his career so far. At Real Madrid, he was often substituted early on in games and was rotated regularly enough thanks to the depth of their squad. In North London, Arsenal rely on him as a key player and over the past couple of months, the gruelling English winter appears to have taken its toll on his game. Perhaps he needs a rest but Wenger feels that he can motivate him through media comments and is likely to field him against Moyes' boys tonight.

It should be a fascinating fixture with United in obviously bad form but with Arsenal also needing a win in order to lift themselves after a scrappy few weeks which has seen them slip from the summit of the Premier League. With Chelsea having dropped two points last night thanks to West Brom's last gasp equaliser, the title race is still open with Arsenal still very much in with a shout as long as they can reverse this recent slump.

D. Ray Morton, 12th February 2014.