Harry Kane says Tottenham have plenty of issues to address because his side “got away with it” after being given a “wakeup call” by Nottingham Forest on Sunday.
Spurs came away from the City Ground with a 2-0 win, but the scoreline did not tell the whole story of the match. Antonio Conte’s side were made to work hard for the victory, which sent them third in the Premier League with 10 points from a possible 12.
Kane scored both of the away side’s goals, but also saw a penalty saved by his England teammate Dean Henderson. The England captain bobbled in early in the first half from Dejan Kulusevski’s pass before nodding in a simple header from Richarlison’s cross to seal the points.
Yet Tottenham spent much of the game on the back foot defending, with Forest having 56 per cent possession and firing in 17 shots on Hugo Lloris’ goal. Kane was glad to get the victory, but felt the game bore similarities to the 1-0 win over Wolves the previous week and believes there is still more to come from his side.
“A good win first and foremost,” he told Sky Sports post-match. “It is a difficult place to come, the atmosphere is really, really good. We didn’t play our best and we know that but all in all we dug in. There have been a couple of games already like that this season but we got the three points and know we can get better. It is a long season and we are still grinding out wins when we are not at our best. That is important.”
Kane was then asked if it was a tactic to allow Forest possession and look to hit them on the counter-attack. “We’ve done that in the first-half a lot this year and it’s kind of a wakeup call until the second half then we have to be more aggressive,” he admitted.
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“Today, we got away with it in the first-half being 1-0 up, but it could’ve been a different story. For sure it’s something we need to fix and quickly, we’ve got games coming up so we can’t afford to not start the first halves well.”
Kane also addressed Son Heung-min’s form after the South Korean was substituted for the third straight game, having failed to score again. Richarlison was brought on by Antonio Conte in the 74th minute and set up Kane’s second, perhaps putting pressure on Son for a starting place.
“We have a lot of games coming up so we’re going to need everyone, of course Sonny is frustrated with not scoring but he’s an important player for us,” Kane said. “If we want to achieve anything this season, we need Sonny to keep doing what he’s doing, he’ll pop up with goals no doubt, but also when players are not quite at it you need players off the bench and Richy’s definitely doing that.”
