Harry Kane not in squad to face Barcelona, “leaning” towards staying at Spurs

Harry Kane did not travel with Tottenham Hotspur to Spain to play against Barcelona in the Joan Gamper Trophy game today. That in and of itself isn’t unusual considering Spurs just played another friendly against Shakhtar Donetsk on Sunday afternoon in which Kane scored four goals and played nearly the entire match. Ange Postecoglou is expected to mostly play the players that did not feature against Shakhtar.

But of course, that’s not the full story because Bayern Munich are still reportedly weighing up yet ANOTHER bid — potentially their fourth — for Kane to try and tempt Daniel Levy to let him go to Germany, and that puts his absence from the team in a new light. That said, time appears to be running out. Dan Kilpatrick, writing in the Evening Standard, says that Kane has set a hard deadline of the start of the new Premier League season for the clubs to agree to a move — if one isn’t made by Sunday’s match at Brentford, he will stay at Tottenham for the upcoming season and presumably re-evaluate his options as the year goes on.

Kilpatrick does say that Kane is “impressed” by Spurs’ new head coach Ange Postecoglou, and if Kane does stay that does keep the door ever so slightly open to him deciding to extend his Spurs contract if the club improves this season. But it’s a potentially huge gamble.

Meanwhile, David Ornstein maintains that Bayern and Spurs are still negotiating, but there’s still a significant gap between what Spurs are demanding and what Bayern are willing to offer.

As ever, this ultimately comes down to Bayern — will they make an offer that meets Daniel Levy’s transfer demands? The fact that they’re still talking means that’s a distinct possibility. But they haven’t yet, so who knows.

God, I’m tired. The next Kane article on this blog might be generated by an AI so I don’t have to write this again.