The Athletic.

Hello, as this nasal. Hello, as this nasal drone always indicates, I'm Danny Kelly, and this is the view from the lane, the athletics Tottenham Hotspur podcast. Today, I'm delighted to say I'm joined by what's essentially the A team, isn't it? The Athletics Charlie Eccleshare and James Moore. And together today we're

going to take part in an exercise that has been entirely manufactured to deal with the fact of

the international break. We'll be comparing the Spurs team that Antonio Conte has inherited to the

one that POTCH inherited in the summer of 2014. We'll be looking at the quality of the squads, the standard

of opposition, and ultimately they decide which manager is or was best place to succeed. It'll

actually be fun, I think. Harry Kane got a hat trick for England, well deserved, and of course

a perfect hat trick. James, were you jumping up and down your seat in support the great man, or were you

slightly looking out through your fingers like I was, knowing that the Keynes of

Manchester City thing would start up literally 30 seconds again after the end of the game?

I wouldn't say I was quite looking through my fingers, fearful that City would be

immediately back in after

Actric against Albania, who looked pretty dreadful, really. But I was quite encouraged by it.

I mean, I think that's probably the obvious emotion, isn't it? Kane hasn't had a good start

to the season by his standards, but by quite a long distance, actually. I mean, I was saying to

Charlie just before we started recording, he wasn't quite at his best, but he didn't look off the pace. I think he kind of looked like he kind of, I think from the look on your face, you're about to disagree with me, but I didn't think he looked kind of as sluggish as he has looked so far this season. He was involved in the game, and you know, like a perfect actor by his very definition.

The good thing about it, and I know Charlie, and we're not letting daylight in on magic here, you're a very, very busy man, often working up to 12 hours a week. You didn't see the game, you only seen the highlights. I'll fill you in on the things that went on around it. But the encouraging thing, James, was that in a team with three at the back and pushed up high wingbacks, he was forced almost to narrow his game, Harry Kane, to get back into the centre of the pitch. And he was

forced by the way England used their two holding players with Henderson getting forward a bit more, as evidenced by the goal that Henderson got, to play nearer to the penalty spot in use. Now, of course, you can't always do that against Chelsea, Manchester City. They're fantastic teams, and you have to come back and get the ball a bit deeper. But by playing a more natural strikers role, guess what? He got a load of chances and bang a load of them away. And also he provided an assist for that Henderson goal, as you mentioned as well, which just goes to show that even if he's playing, you know, in and around the penalty area, he can still create goals too. How much can we obviously before the game did a piece on kind of the – Oh, this was before the Everton game, actually, in fact, on Kane and Conte and how much. Yeah, there's a lot of precedent there to suggest this could be a really great appointment. Obviously, Kane's very excited. I mean, how much do we put this, can we attribute that to the Conte factor or is this more just, does Gareth deserve the credit here? Yeah, he deserves, I mean, Southgate deserves credit because he found a system that allows Harry Kane.

I think he's got 11 goals this calendar year for England.

If he keeps that up, he will overtake Wayne Rooney's all-time record in the, probably,

with the winning goal in the semi-final of the World Cup and Qatar.

Ideal, perfect.

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