The stats behind Harry Kane’s subtly stunning 2022/23 season
Standing at a towering 6'4, it's easy to fall into Erling Haaland's shadow.
The Nordic goal-gobbler has snagged every individual award available along with the Premier League title during a debut season in English football like no other.
However, peering over Haaland's shoulder, between the flaxen locks, Harry Kane has quietly enjoyed arguably the greatest individual campaign of his already iconic career.
During a year where he became the all-time top scorer for Tottenham and England in the space of 46 days, here are some of the statistics behind Kane's subtly stunning season.
European elite
For just the second time in his career, Kane clocked up 30 league goals - Kevin Phillips is the only other Englishman to hit that marker in the Premier League this century.
Kane has outscored the reigning Ballon d'Or holder, the World Cup Golden Boot winner and the player of the tournament in the global jamboree this season. None of the leading scorers in the top flights of Spain, Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands or Portugal can match Kane's haul.
Only a certain Scandinavian has joined the England captain on the other side of the 30-goal threshold this year. Yet, Kane's colleagues have hardly helped him out.
Tottenham's saviour
In 2017, Pep Guardiola caused quite the storm when he labelled Tottenham ‘the Harry Kane team’. Yet, the Catalan’s comments have never been more applicable this season.
No player across the Premier League has scored a larger proportion of their team’s goals than Kane - who accounts for 43% of Tottenham’s haul. The Kane-dependency has been magnified by Son Heung-min's desperate struggles this term, registering his worst goal return in seven years.
Six clubs have created more chances than Spurs yet Kane leads the division for shots. Tottenham’s talisman is responsible for almost a quarter of the efforts which the team has attempted this term (24% - another league high).
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Thriving amid strife
After their final home game of the season - a typically abominable 3-1 loss to Brentford - a highlights package of Tottenham's campaign was played on the stadium's big screen. What had been a detailed review abruptly concluded with Kane's club-record goal against Manchester City. That was the first week of February.
In truth, there have been few highlights for Spurs this season - apart from Kane, of course.
For the first time since 2009, Tottenham have slumped to a finish as low as eighth. No player in the history of the Premier League has ever scored as many as 30 goals for a team that ended the campaign outside the top seven before Kane rose above the chaos.
As many as 20 of Kane's non-penalty Premier League goals have come when Tottenham have either been level or trailing (12 have put Spurs ahead while eight have reduced the deficit - both are division highs).
By comparison, 19 of Haaland's non-penalty tally this season have been converted when City were already leading.
Travelling triumphs
"When teams come to our place," Kane explained in 2017, "they're going to drop off [defend deep], and we've got to find a way to get around that and win. It's maybe a bit more open away and we take advantage of that."
Kane has exploited any extra space more than anyone else in Premier League history.
A final-day brace - extending his own record at the season's conclusion - at Leeds United's Elland Road took Kane to 16 league goals away from home. No player has ever scored more on the road in one Premier League season.
In fact, across the entire history of the competition, Kane is the leading scorer in away games - boasting 112, more than Cristiano Ronaldo ever got in the Premier League at any venue.
Although, Tottenham's home support are no strangers to a Kane strike; when the 29-year-old overtook Wayne Rooney in the division's all-time scoring charts with the winner against Crystal Palace in May, Kane racked up his 100th Premier League home goal to become the only player with a century of strikes on the road and in front of their own fans.
The king of consistency
At times it may have felt as though a Haaland goal was a suffocating certainty, yet Kane ended more matches on the scoresheet.
On 26 separate occasions, Kane found the net for Tottenham - a record for a 20-team season in the Premier League. Haaland may be built like Thanos but Kane was almost entirely inevitable.
What made Kane such a constant threat was his continued capacity to widen an already varied skill set. For the first time in Premier League history, one player racked up double digits for headers scored with Kane surpassing Duncan Ferguson's aerial prowess from the mid-1990s at the sharp tip of Tottenham's improved set pieces.
Kane's first goal of the season was a 96th-minute equaliser against Chelsea, glancing in a header at a controversially awarded corner for a sign of things to come. Kane ended the season with ten goals in London derbies - a single-season tally only Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink could match in 2001/02.
Just 16 days after the heartbreak of a World Cup quarter-final exit against France, Kane nodded another header past capital foes Brentford on Boxing Day. The Bees were the last club that Kane had faced but never scored against in the English top flight. No other player with more than one appearance in the competition has ever found the net against every opponent they've come up against.
In any venue, at any height and against any opponent, Kane has come to the fore.
On this edition of OWAN, part of the 90min podcast network, Sean Walsh and Jude Summerfield discuss the news Arne Slot won't be taking over as the new Spurs boss, who might take the job, the loss to Brentford & more! If you can't see this embed, click here to listen to the podcast!