Tottenham set asking price for Man Utd & Man City target Harry Kane
By Tom Gott
Tottenham Hotspur have warned Manchester United and Manchester City that they will have to cough up at least £150m for them to even consider selling striker Harry Kane.
Calls for Kane to leave Spurs are by no means a new thing, but speculation has intensified this season as the club continue to struggle to challenge for trophies. Jose Mourinho's side currently sit ninth in the Premier League table and are at risk of missing out on Champions League football two years in a row.
Kane is widely accepted to be one of the finest strikers on the planet, but he is now 27 years old and is yet to win a trophy in his senior career, and some have suggested that it is time for the Englishman to leave Spurs in search of more success.
Spurs are obviously firmly against the idea of losing their talisman, who is under contract until 2024, and the Daily Mail claim chairman Daniel Levy has slapped a whopping £150m price tag on Kane's head to show his potential suitors that he is not messing about.
Their stance is that Kane is not for sale, and the hope is that this figure will scare away the likes of United and City, although Spurs are well aware that their own financial struggles mean they should listen to any and all reasonable offers.
Matching his £200,000-a-week wages would be no problem for United or City, but forking out £150m will likely be too much for both sides. English teams are now approaching 12 months without any revenue from ticket sales, so it is hardly an ideal time to splash out on what would be the third most expensive transfer of all time.
United are keen to find a bona-fide goalscorer this summer to help ease the pressure on the likes of Bruno Fernandes and Marcus Rashford, with manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer recently confessing that his forward line haven't really hit the heights he expected from them thus far.
A lack of goals is not the problem for City, whose return of 49 strikes in 24 Premier League games sits only behind United's 50, but the concern for Pep Guardiola is it hasn't been his strikers who have been scoring them.
Sergio Aguero has been injured for a large part of this season, while backup Gabriel Jesus has failed to impress, so Guardiola is expected to splash out on a new hitman in the summer.
Borussia Dortmund's Erling Haaland and Inter's Romelu Lukaku are both on City's radar, and both players may prove to be cheaper than the £150m required to even tempt Spurs to do business over Kane.