Harry Kane is Carty Free’s 2020-21 Tottenham Hotspur Player of the Season

Cartilage Free Captain’s Tottenham Hotspur Player of the Season for 2020-21 is Harry Kane.

In the end, it was an easy choice to make. While Tottenham’s season can’t really be viewed as anything except a disappointment — Spurs finished in seventh place, outside of the Europa League qualification spots and only qualifying for the Conference League by the slimmest of margins — the same can’t be said for its vice captain and best player.

Kane finished the season with 33 goals and 17 assists in all competitions this season, 23 goals and 14 assists in Premier League play. It’s the most amount of goals he’s scored since the 2017-18 season. That tally not only earned him the Golden Boot and the Premier League Playmaker awards, just the third time that’s happened in Premier League history, but it put him just 45 goals behind Jimmy Greaves as Tottenham’s all time top goal scorer.

So in the end this was a straightforward choice, though it must also be note that Son Heung-Min also had a season that for him was almost as impressive. Between the two of them, Kane and Son accounted for a total of 40 goals, (58% of Spurs’ total), and 24 assists (48% of total), underscoring just how important both of them were to Tottenham’s fortunes. It suggests what might have happened under Jose Mourinho this season had either of them been off the boil.

There’s a very real question as to whether Harry Kane will be a Tottenham player next season. We won’t go into the various issues at play here, but to summarize it quickly, Kane wants to leave to go win trophies elsewhere, but still has three years left on a six year contract, and Daniel Levy won’t even contemplate selling him for anything less that stupid money. In a post-COVID financial environment, that seems unlikely, but stranger things have happened. And if he stays, there’s a non-zero chance he could reach Greaves’ record in as soon as a year or two.

What this season does really put a fine point on is just how important Kane has been to Tottenham’s offense. Kane has defied this blog’s previous prediction that he might start to fall away after a series of ankle injuries, and adjusted his game to drop deeper and be as much of a creator as he is a goal scorer. That he had a real shot for a while of breaking the Premier League assist record of 20 speaks to that as well.

And if this is Kane’s last season in a lilywhite shirt, at least he went out with a bang.

Community Player of the Season

Yeah, this one wasn’t close. It’s also Harry Kane.

This was a blowout. The comments may have suggested that some of you gave it a good long think, but the poll data said otherwise. Harry Kane waltzed to the Community Player of the Season title with 68% of the vote.

What’s more interesting is the second place player, who ended up being Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg. This surprised me, especially after a season when Son Heung-Min scored more goals (22) than he ever has at Tottenham. But Hojbjerg was a hugely impressive presence in the midfield for Spurs this season, playing every single minute of every Premier League match. At least he was impressive until his legs fell off in February.

“Other” came in third place, probably because I screwed up and didn’t think to include Hugo Lloris as an option in the poll. He wouldn’t have won, but it was foolish of me to leave him out, and I apologize for that. Hugo was the leader of the write-in vote, followed closely by a bunch of cheeky votes for Harry Winks. Tanguy Ndombele was also well featured.

Other notable write-in votes:

• Bacon Sandwich
• Jamie Tartt doo do do do do doo
• Leandro Damiao
• The Carty Free Masthead for dealing with this shit [Ed: thanks!]
• Diego Armando Mararodona [sic]
• Dane Scarlett’s One Touch
• Wayne Gretzky
• Danny Rose
• Oliver Skipp
• They All Sucked!!!!!