Pochettino names four players who could play the Messi role for Spurs

Mauricio Pochettino has suggested he may not replace the injured Harry Kane with a centre-forward in the Tottenham team.

Spurs’ leading marksman was recently sidelined, reportedly till March, after damaging ankle ligaments in the club’s 1-0 defeat to Manchester United.

How worried should Spurs be about losing Kane? Five things to know…

1. Harry Kane has been Spurs top scorer for the last four seasons.
2. He is their current leading goalscorer having bagged 20 goals across 31 matches in all competitions.
3. That is eight more than second-place Heung-min Son (12), who is on international duty with South Korea.
4. Kane is also the only Spurs player to reach double figures in the Premier League this season.
5. Fernando Llorente, the club’s other used centre-forward, has yet to register a goal in the league.

Kane’s absence comes at the wrong time for Pochettino who recently saw Son – after registering seven goals in his last eight matches – depart for the Asian Games.

Both he and Kane have been the club’s most consistent source of goals this season. With neither available to Pochettino for the foreseeable future, the Spurs boss could be forced to exhaust his tactical acumen.

Although there’s the option of fielding Kane’s understudy Fernando Llorente, who has only played 36 minutes of Premier League football this season, Pochettino nevertheless feels the solution to his problem can be found in Barcelona.

While recognising a player of Lionel Messi’s calibre is not available for him to select, Pochettino believes the deep-lying forward (or false nine) role he often plays can be replicated.

“I was watching Barcelona and the striker was Leo Messi,” he told reporters.

“You can play Llorente, you can play Dele Alli, you can play Erik Lamela, you can play Kazaiah Sterling, Troy Parrott. You can play many, many players.

“Chelsea played against us with Eden Hazard like a striker, when Olivier Giroud was on the bench and Alvaro Morata was out of the squad.”

How have Spurs coped in the past without Kane?

Since the arrival of Pochettino in the summer of 2014, he’s always been able to call upon Kane and the English centre-forward has subsequently grown in stature. Once dubbed a ‘one-season wonder’, today Kane stands alongside the world’s very best strikers and could be argued as the number one.

Under the leadership of Pochettino, he’s made 218 appearances in all competitions registering 155 goals along the way.

So far the Londoner has missed 18 matches due to various injuries. Across those outings, spanning the last two seasons, they’ve come out victorious on 10 occasions whilst losing just four times.

When it comes to scoring in Kane’s absence, Spurs have registered 26 goals (or one every 62 minutes), although they did fail to find the net in six matches of those fixtures.

The post Lionel Messi could inspire Spurs’ solution to their Harry Kane problem appeared first on Squawka News.

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