Harry Kane says Tottenham’s season falling apart has been like a “dagger through the heart.”
Tottenham have been left facing another year without silverware after crashing out of the FA Cup and Champions League in the space of a week.
Kane admits that finishing in the top four alone is “not enough” as he voiced his own frustrations at the club not winning trophies which will set alarm bells ringing among Spurs fans.
Tottenham’s decision to only use Kane as a substitute in the FA Cup exit at Sheffield United backfired spectacularly as they lost “momentum.”
That defeat set the tone for another loss at Wolves and a blow to their top four hopes followed by their lacklustre and painfully flat exit from Europe against AC Milan.
It has been a nightmare week which will leave Tottenham fans fearing what it could mean for Kane’s future as the England captain will only have a year left on his contract this summer.
Manchester United and Bayern Munich are both keen on Kane who also admits that the Spurs fans are right to voice their frustrations because just finishing in the top four is not enough for a club which has not a trophy since 2008.
Kane said: “I totally understand it. Top four is not good enough for anyone at this club, especially the fans. They have the right to voice their opinion.
“The last week especially just hasn't been good enough. Before the Sheffield United game, the season could have been a whole lot different.
“You go through there, you take that momentum into the league game [at Wolves] and this game. But I feel like that loss last week put a dagger in our hearts and as you can see we haven't really recovered from that.
“Where we're at as a club, we should be winning trophies. That's always the aim. The top four [being our only target] is a consequence of not playing as well as we want to play.
“Now that's all we can fight for so that's going to be the goal and hopefully we can achieve that come the end of the season. But for sure, it's not enough for this club.”
Kane has been fiercely loyal to Tottenham, has become the club’s all-time leading goalscorer this season but he does face a dilemma this summer over whether to leave, allow his contract to run down or commit himself to a new deal.
Nothing is set in stone about Kane’s future but he has never hidden from his ambition to win trophies and yet even a world class manager like Conte has been unable to deliver silverware.
Conte, who is on £15m-a-year, looks certain to leave in the summer as Tottenham will not exercise a 12 month option if the Italian wants to quit.
Kane insisted that Conte’s future is the manager’s decision but said the players have been giving everything but they need to improve in “many aspects.”
Kane added: “That's his decision, he's going to be the one that makes that choice. All we can do as players is try to perform for him, work as hard as we can. That's what we're doing.
“I said after the Wolves game at the weekend, you can't fault the effort of the players. We're trying, we're training but we're just lacking something.
“We've talked about mentality before and that ruthless hunger to be better, to be the best, to be one of the best teams in Europe. We just haven't quite found that yet.
“It's hard to put a finger on it. Especially over the last week we've lacked quality in key moments against teams that we've had good opportunities against. The last three games we haven't scored a goal and that's not good enough.
“That's just the reality of it. We need to improve in a lot of aspects and that's the bottom line.”
