Tottenham Hotspur's Best XI Of The Decade: Second Striker

Finally! The last player that will be added to our Best XI of the Decade squad for Tottenham Hotspur. This has been a much larger undertaking than I imagined and I'm quite glad we'll only be doing this every 10 years or so. The important thing is that we're at the final position and we have one of the most interesting battles we've seen in all the voting.

Partnering the number 9 in our 4-4-2 formation will be one of the following strikers. This list only includes only two players and, really, to include anyone other than these two would be ridiculous. Each brings something a little different to the table, but both are certainly worthy of inclusion.

Robbie Keane: In total Keane has made 291 appearances for the club and has scored 121 goals. During his first stint with the club he scored 13, 16, 17, 16, 22, and 23 goals respectively. Since his return from Liverpool, as we all know, he hasn't been the same and has since scored only 14 goals total. I'm not sure if Spurs were Keane's boyhood club, but for years he played as if they were. Few players worked harder than the Irishman, who was equally capable of playing the role of a deep-lying forward or a poacher. Keane also formed a terrific partnership with Dimitar Berbatov that helped Spurs bring home a League Cup in 2008. Who knows what would have happened to the Club if Keane and a few others hadn't eaten that dodgy lasagna before the West Ham United game in 2006.

Jermain Defoe: Another player with two stints with Tottenham Hotspur, Defoe was much less consistent than his Irish counterpart. In 260 games with the Spurs Defoe has, thus far, scored 101 goals in all competitions. Defoe's totals are boosted by seasons in which he scored 18, 22, and 24 goals. However, in no other season with the Club did he score more than ten goals and his league totals, aside from 2008-09, were always middling. The Englishman is very much an advanced striker/poacherand (like Keane) seemed to be almost always offside. Hampering the player's performance was the fact that Defoe often came in off the bench for Spurs to spell the likes of Keane, Berbatov, or Darren Bent and his goal totals suffered for it. His pace has always made him difficult for opposing teams to contain, but at times his finishing has lacked.