Harry Kane says Spurs have to rediscover ‘lost values’ from the Pochettino era

Harry Kane has said that Tottenham have lost some of the values that made them such a formidable team a few years ago and called on the club to reclaim the ‘culture’ they had during Mauricio Pochettino’s era.

Tottenham’s strategy of hiring ‘win-now’ managers has backfired over recent years, with the Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte experiments failing miserably.

In fact, even though the Lilywhites have loosened their purse strings since moving into the new stadium, the team has regressed from where they were under Pochettino.

There now seems to be a major disconnect between the team and the fans, and Kane has now put that down to the values that the club have lost over the last few years.

When asked how Spurs can improve, the striker told Sky Sports: “They are conversations that need to be had toward the end of the season.

“I feel like we lost a bit of what the values are at this club over the last few years. It’s about finding a way to get back on the same page again and obviously even with the fans as well.”

Kane insisted that the squad has enough talent to compete with the best sides in the Premier League but admitted that the margins are now finer than they have ever been in the English top flight.

The striker continued: “When you’ve been here this long, I’ve been here since I was 11 years old, you understand what the fans are like, you understand what the club’s like. You’ve been through good moments with the club, I’ve been through not-so-good moments.

“Values are…everyone wants to win and everyone wants to lift trophies and that’s ultimately our aim every year. But we’re in a different situation to some of the clubs around us and we have to accept that but still find a way to improve and get better.

“We probably haven’t been doing that in recent years so ultimately it’s about getting back to competing right at the very top and our squad has got enough talent to do that.

“Ultimately, there are some things that may need to change I think everyone is doing everything they can to try and achieve that.

“But when you look at the competition in the Premier League now, the fine line between being one of the top clubs and 10th or 11th is very slim and you have to make sure you’re on it in every department.”

While the England captain acknowledged that the transition needed at N17 is far from easy but reiterated that it needs to start with a cultural shift.

When asked about he is talking about getting back to the values the club had during the Pochettino era, the 29-year-old responded: “Yeah, I think whenever you have a good moment as a team, I think we had three or four really good years when we were competing at the very top and that was without spending loads of money.

“We had a really good mixture of young and experienced players. It’s impossible in football to click your fingers and go back to the good times and say ‘let’s go back to what it was’, because every season and every situation is different.

“But I feel like there were some values at that time and some culture that really made us achieve the things we did.

“So maybe we’ve lost parts of that over the last few years and it’s about looking back at that and seeing the good things we can take from that and trying to implement that in the future.”

Spurs Web Opinion

It sounds like Kane is not only talking about the style of football that Spurs have moved away from but also the hunger and the spirit of being an underdog that the club had during the Pochettino era.

That would best be achieved by hiring someone like Kompany, who can perhaps unite the squad and get the players fighting for one another rather than going for another big-name manager, who feels the job might be slightly beneath him.

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