Harry Kane carved out a slice of history when he scored the only goal of Tottenham Hotspur’s 1-0 win over Fulham on Monday evening. The strike took him to 266 in total, equalling Jimmy Greaves’ all-time record for the club.
Spurs fans old enough to recall the early 1960s will have a view over which of the two was better, though Kane’s illustrious predecessor reached the mark in 33 fewer appearances for the club. The current England captain will undoubtedly set a new Tottenham record and one which is unlikely to ever be beaten though.
Greaves and Kane make for an interesting comparison with Ian Rush and Mohamed Salah, Liverpool’s record goal scorer and their current leading man. Where the former duo are tied at this point, Salah has exactly half as many goals as Rush. The Egyptian will finish his time with the Reds as one of their leading scorers but he will not reach the summit.
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This speaks to both the remarkable longevity Rush had at the club, as well as the enormous success to which he helped fire them. For Kane to have reached Tottenham’s goal scoring pinnacle without winning a single trophy feels implausible, a glitch in the footballing matrix.
He may also eventually overtake Alan Shearer to become the Premier League's leading goal scorer while – if he stays at Spurs, which is not guaranteed – potentially remaining deprived of silverware. Few players have done more to help their side’s cause though. His 150 league goals since the start of 2016/17 was highlighted by WhoScored as the most any player has bagged in the English top flight in that period.
However, if we move the start point forward by 12 months, we find that Kane trails Salah. It’s remarkable how similar their numbers are for the last six seasons. The Liverpool man leads the goal total by four, be that with or without penalties.
Salah has also played more football, in fairness, but only an average of around an hour per season. The difference in the frequency that the two men have taken a shot is so negligible it equates to one more for the Liverpool forward roughly every year-and-a-half of Premier League action.
Kane is often praised for his ability to drop deep, link play and create chances for the likes of Son Heung-min. He provided 14 league assists in 2020/21, a single season mark which Salah has never reached (though he only fell one short last season). However, the Reds’ number 11 has more in total over the last six campaigns, having brought up his half century in the recent 3-1 victory at Villa Park.
It is little surprise their numbers are so similar, such are the elite talents possessed by both players. While Salah has had the advantage of representing the better team, on the whole since the summer of 2017, Kane has undoubtedly benefited in a positional sense. Per Understat, the Tottenham man has made all-but-one of his league starts in the last six seasons as a centre-forward, where his Liverpool counterpart has had just 25 such appearances.
Former Reds’ striker John Aldridge made the case that Salah should get more opportunities in that position in his latest Echo column. “We can start Darwin Nunez on the left and Cody Gakpo on the right and put Salah down the middle, where he has already shown this season he looks more of a threat at this stage of his career,” he wrote.
The stats fully endorse the suggestion. The 30-year-old has scored 10 goals from 22 appearances on the right but seven in six centrally in 2022/23. Granted, the latter sample was boosted by a Champions League record-setting hattrick against a demoralised Rangers side, but Salah has a good record as a centre-forward throughout his career.
His most recent league goals and start there occurred in a 2-1 win at Tottenham, a match in which Kane also scored. It was the Liverpool man who had the edge over Spurs’ joint-record top goal scorer that day, just as he has had since joining the Reds.
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