STRIKING BACK

Three months on from when we were supposed to meet, we finally face Manchester United tonight with both clubs’ number 10s back in the frame after injuries. Harry Kane reflects on his own return to fitness, plus that of United’s Marcus Rashford and tells us how he’s coped during lockdown.

- Billy Shaw

By rights, he wouldn’t have been playing in this game.

Injured in January, the Club’s home-grown, talismanic number 10 was set to miss Manchester United’s visit to Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and was in a well-publicised race against time to be fit for England’s Euro 2020 campaign this summer.

If he’d made it, the free-scoring forward would have been lining up in the Three Lions’ second group stage fixture at Wembley tonight.

For Harry Kane, read Marcus Rashford. Or vice versa.

Such is the strangely parallel plot line for ourselves and United coming into this rearranged game, with both clubs expected to welcome back their respective main strikers following spells in the treatment room.

Our hitman Harry pulled up with a hamstring injury during the New Year’s Day trip to Southampton, while his opposite number, Rashford, suffered a back problem in an FA Cup tie against Wolves a fortnight later. Both would have missed this fixture on its original date of 15 March if the outbreak of COVID-19 hadn’t intervened. And, fitness permitting, they’d surely have been going in to bat alongside each other for England just a few miles around the North Circular in major international tournament action this evening.

But they’re not. They’re fit again and their respective clubs are gunning for each other with three Premier League points up for grabs as our elongated season resumes tonight with the first of nine vital remaining games.

The irony isn’t lost on Harry.