Kane brace helps Tottenham thrash London rivals West Ham
In this most unpredictable of Premier League seasons, it is perhaps time to start taking Tottenham Hotspur seriously as title challengers. Certainly, given the way others have opened the path, there will be acute disappointment at White Hart lane if it doesn’t at least qualify for the Champions League. Spurs remain fifth after the 4-1 victory over West Ham on Sunday, but it is only four points behind the leaders Leicester City and only two behind fourth-placed Arsenal.
Perhaps most meaningful is the fact that Spurs have lost only once in the league this season, and that was the unfortunate defeat on the opening day away at Manchester United. Next week’s home game against Chelsea was always going to be intriguing; now it feels like a major test of Tottenham’s credentials. It’s good, the solidest Tottenham for years, but does it really have the temperament for achievement?
Earlier in the season, with Harry Kane enduring a 748-minute goal drought, there was a sense that Spurs lacked the cutting edge to take advantage of its regular dominance of opposition midfields. After scoring the opener and third here, Kane has eight goals in last five appearances for Spurs, who have won six of their last nine.
West Ham’s away record this season has been superb, featuring wins at Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea, and it appeared for the opening quarter of the game that it might be able to pull off something similar. Gradually, though, Spurs’ greater invention began to tell. Perhaps it would have been a different story had Dmitri Payet been available, but Spurs simply looked the more imaginative side, the team with more individuals capable of a moment of subtlety to unlock an opponent. Payet will be out for three months; without him, this might be a long winter for West Ham.
Christian Eriksen had just drawn a fine parry from Adrian with a shot that deflected off James Tomkins when, with 23 minutes played, Kane spun onto the loose ball as Dele Alli’s shot was blocked, rolled Carl Jenkinson and lashed a finish just under the bar. The full-back, perhaps, was undone a little too easily, but more than anything the goal was the result of Kane’s sharpness ad opportunism.
Here he was superb, powerful, direct and intelligent, those weeks when the ball simply wouldn’t go in seeming a bizarre aberration. His second goal, Tottenham’s third, was the result of a poor pass out of defense from Tomkins, and Adrian might have done better as the ball scooted under his body, but Kane deserved credit for the power of the strike and the earliness with which he hit it.
In those four previous away games against the elite, West ham had never trailed. Having gone behind here, its lack of tactical options was exposed; as soon as it chased the game it began to look vulnerable. Only when Cheikhou Kouyate, who was offside but not flagged, smacked an overhead against the bar after Mark Noble’s shot had been half-blocked, did West Ham threaten to get back into the game.
It was only eight minutes after that, though, that Tottenham added a second, Toby Alderweireld weirdly unchallenged as he met Eriksen’s corner just inside the six-yard box. Spurs’ win could easily have been more emphatic. Alli headed against the bar after a Son Heung-Min shot had been half-blocked, Kane scuffed a one-on-one badly wide, and Adrian made a smart double save in the second half to keep out efforts from Son and Eriksen.
Kyle Walker eventually added a fourth, bending in a finish with the outside of his right foot after a one-two with Son. Manuel Lanzini’s late goal for West Ham was neatly worked and emphatically finished, but it came far too late to have any bearing on the result.
The only negative for Spurs is that Alli will miss next Sunday's game against Chelsea after accumulating five yellow cards. To an extent that’s an occupational habit for a holding midfielder, but this was a silly booking, picked up for squaring up to Noble after he’d clashed with Kane, one of a number of flare-ups in a tetchy second half. For all Kane’s rediscovered goal touch, it’s still the midfield axis of Eric Dier and Alli, with just 40 years between them, that has been Spurs’ great strength this season.
That said, if Spurs are to make a serious tilt at the title, it must show it has the squad to deal with absentees. That means being able to win games even when Kane isn’t scoring, and to cope without half of its midfield axis. In that regard it felt significant that Pochettino introduced Ryan Mason, who hit the post late on, for Alli with 20 minutes to go. Already, it seemed, he was preparing for the bigger test of next Sunday.
