Robbie Keane: Resting Kane would say Spurs don’t want a top four finish

When I was at Spurs, we had myself, Jermain Defoe, Dimitar Berbatov, and Darren Bent.

But Harry Kane is in a different situation, because they don’t have four strikers like that. They have him and Fernando Llorente – no disrespect to Llorente, because he’s a good target man who will do a job for the team, but he’s not going to score 20 or 25 goals a season.

So if Tottenham leave Harry out – because he’s tired – then they’re making a statement that they don’t want to finish in the top four.

It’s just not going to happen if you leave him out for a few games, because of the goals that he brings and that makes it unrealistic to rest him.

Knowing Harry the way I do – he used to clean my boots when I was there – he just wants to play football and score goals.

When he doesn’t score goals, people will say he’s tired. That’s what you have to deal with when you’re at the top of the game, people will always scrutinise you if you don’t net for a couple of games.

But he’s done that himself, because of how far he’s come.

It’ll annoy Harry, all this talk about him being tired. If he scores a couple of goals this weekend, though, people will forget about it.

Spurs should still be positive

Tottenham need to win a trophy. There have been a few moans that they didn’t make a signing over the summer, but I know first-hand that they tried to sign four players, it just wasn’t meant to be – teams were overpricing players.

I can understand from the fans’ point of view on that, but if you look at the bigger picture for the last few years, it’s been up and up for Tottenham. If they can buy a couple of players in January, which I’m sure they will, and help the squad, they can have a good season.

There’s definitely still positivity around Spurs with the new stadium coming and things are certainly looking up.

You’d have to be excited by what’s going on there, as a player. An unbelievable training ground, an unbelievable stadium being built, and they have a lot of young players who are going to be there for a long time to help the club win trophies.

With the players that they have, that’ll attract people as well. They’re a club that’s going to be challenging for trophies, and they’re probably only two or three players off it.

* Robbie Keane was speaking to us at our Museum of Mischief in Dublin on Tuesday night. You can find out more about the Museum of Mischief here.