Harry Kane would been enjoying this year’s breakout season (26 goals in all competitions) for any number of Premier League or Championship clubs had Tim Sherwood not swooped in and saved the day, blocking the sale of the then-20-year-old Tottenham Hotspur forward last January, according to Sherwood.
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Speaking during his weekly press conference on Thursday, Sherwood, now the manager of Aston Villa, revealed that his Tottenham superiors were set to pull the trigger and offload Kane after less than 10 first-team appearances for the club. To hear Sherwood tell it, it was all about getting rid of the Englishman and bringing in another fancy foreigner to appease the fans.
“It’s great I resisted the temptation to get rid of him last January because perhaps he wouldn’t be the star he is for Tottenham. I would never have allowed him to be sold when I was there.
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“If they had brought in somebody last January and his name ended in a ‘I’ or an ‘O’ the fans would have been very excited, but I’m not sure he would have given the same output as Harry Kane has given.”
This is, roughly, the 186th time Sherwood has taken retrospective shots at the Spurs hierarchy since leaving the club at the end of last season.
This is the most outrageous claim of them all, though, as only Sherwood’s inflated sense of self-worth and status could lead him to believe he had the clout and power, as a glorified interim manager on an 18-month contract with a cheap buyout clause, to block a move that either chairman Daniel Levy or technical director Franco Baldini wanted to make.
There’s a reason Sherwood, who took over as Spurs boss in December 2013 and was relieved of his duties in May 2014, wasn’t backed with the transfer budget to make a single signing during the January window with Spurs once again chasing Champions League qualification — Sherwood wasn’t trusted and never had the sway within the club to do such things. Spurs had also just spent over $130 million in the summer following the sale of Gareth Bale, and there was little speculation in January of rumored incoming players.
Sherwood will point to his 58-percent win percentage as the main reason he should have been retained at Spurs, but not even that was enough to give the club’s hierarchy the sense he could be trusted with the club’s important decisions and future well-being.
