Kane injury latest on a frustrating day for Spurs and their FPL assets

Paul Pogba and Marcus Rashford delivered more attacking returns as Manchester United kept up their 100% record under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer but the Red Devils’ victory was overshadowed – from a Fantasy perspective, at least – by an injury to Harry Kane late in the game.

We round up the key Fantasy talking points, salient manager quotes and the all-important injury updates from an absorbing encounter at Wembley on Sunday afternoon.

Tottenham Hotspur 0-1 Manchester United

• Goal: Marcus Rashford (£7.4m)
• Assist: Paul Pogba (£8.5m)

Game-changer? Season-definer? Template-shaper? Or just perhaps, a lot of fuss about nothing.

The next few days will likely tell as to how significant Harry Kane‘s (£12.6m) as yet undiagnosed ankle injury will be from a Fantasy perspective.

At the time of writing, 32.2% of Fantasy Premier League managers own the Spurs and England striker, making him the second-most-popular forward option in the game.

The Lilywhites sit top of our Season Ticker for the next five Gameweeks and it would be fair to assume that few of his owners would have moved him on despite Sunday’s two-pointer at Wembley, which after all was his first blank in a Premier League start since October.

Up until the 95th minute of the penultimate match of Gameweek 22, the focus of this Scout Notes piece was on Manchester United assets and their fifth consecutive league win under interim manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

A desperate, late block tackle from Phil Jones (£5.1m) changed the narrative of Sunday’s exhilarating encounter in north-west London, however, and sparked much discussion as to the ramifications of a potential Kane injury to Spurs’ weakening title challenge and the Fantasy landscape for the weeks ahead.

After spending several minutes on the “hallowed turf” of Wembley either side of the full-time whistle, Kane gingerly limped from the field and towards the dressing rooms.

That he was able to do this without aid is a potentially positive sign but further assessment will be required over the coming days to determine the extent of the problem.

His manager at least provided some details in his post-match press conference on Sunday evening, also referencing the groin injury that forced Moussa Sissoko‘s (£4.9m) departure just before the break:

We will see what happens with Harry Kane, I think Moussa is only a small thing but we will see, we need to assess Harry Kane. At the end, I think he suffered a big tackle and twist his ankle and now we need to assess him the next few days, hoping it is not a big issue.

[Sissoko’s problem] was a small thing in his groin. Let’s hope it is not a big issue too.

In football, you cannot avoid the risk. The people they criticise me when we play Harry Kane 15 or 20 minutes at Tranmere and I told you, the injury can appear when you don’t know when. And look today, in the last action of the game.

We will see. First of all, we need to assess him and Moussa and hope it is not a big issue and then we are going to try and find a way to play if we are to lose them but hope it is not going to be a long period.

Mauricio Pochettino commented further on Kane in a separate post-match interview:

My worry is that it was a bad tackle in the last moment. It wasn’t the intention of the United player but it was a bad tackle and now he has a bit of a swelling on his ankle and he was limping after the game.

We are going to lose Son for the Asian Cup and if Harry Kane suffers an injury it is going to be massive for us.

Kane’s ankle knock only compounded a frustrating afternoon for his owners, with the premium forward having spurned a number of goalscoring opportunities and been on the wrong end of an inspired David de Gea (£5.7m) performance in the United goal.

Spurs didn’t register a single shot on target in the first half but recorded 11 such efforts after half-time, with Kane twice being denied by the legs of de Gea when well-positioned in the United box and planting a header from a Christian Eriksen (£9.3m) corner straight at the United shot-stopper from six yards out.

Kane was inches away from connecting with an overhit Fernando Llorente (£5.6m) pass in the game’s dying minutes and had a presentable first-half opportunity blocked by a last-ditch Nemanja Matic (£5.0m) lunge after losing marker Jones at a corner-kick situation.

This was, quite frankly, simply one of those days for Kane and Spurs assets in general. There was little wrong with the premium striker’s underlying stats: no FPL forward registered as many efforts on goal or shots on target as the England international this weekend. On another given Gameweek, Kane could have racked up a double-digit haul and in doing so led Spurs to victory.

De Gea’s performance conjured up memories of Peter Schmeichel’s display against Newcastle United in 1995/96 or Tim Howard’s heroics for the United States against Belgium in the 2014 World Cup.

In reality, the Spaniard didn’t really make too many “worldies” en route to a 12-point haul in FPL, but as Watford’s Ben Foster pointed out on social media, de Gea’s superb positioning was as worthy of commendation as any camera-friendly saves might have been.

Dele Alli (£8.9m) was another Spurs asset to be thwarted by the Spanish custodian, firing at de Gea’s legs after being set free by Kane, seeing a headed effort parried away and then drawing a comfortable save from the United number one when shooting from 12 yards out.

De Gea’s stop from Toby Alderweireld (£6.0m) was perhaps the pick of his stops, while Harry Winks (£5.5m) and Llorente finished timidly when seeing the whites of the premium goalkeeper’s eyes.

Pochettino was remarkably upbeat about Spurs’ display and their second-half performance in particular:

I think the performance I am so happy with. The last 45 minutes, the second half, we played so well. I think we created enough chances to score and win the game. De Gea made 11 saves which made him man of the match in the end. For me, it was one of the best performances that I’ve seen, after four and a half years, at Tottenham, the best 45 minutes.

In the first half, we didn’t create too much but I think we dominated the first half. Of course, when we suffered the injury of Sissoko, we didn’t organise quickly and maybe in that moment, there were a few minutes in which we conceded the goal. Overall I think the performance was fantastic. That is football.

Sometimes you deserve it but you don’t win, but sometimes you don’t deserve it too much and you win. My feeling today is in the opposite way to when we played at Old Trafford in Manchester. We won the game 3-0 but I wasn’t happy, today after the defeat I am very pleased with the performance. That is the way that if you want to build a team and a structure for the future and be close to winning titles, that is the way you have to work and play. Disappointed with the result, of course, I cannot talk in a different way, but very happy with the reaction after we conceded the goal and in the second half, we created more than enough chances to score to draw or win the game.

One lapse of concentration and a misplaced pass from the below-par Kieran Trippier (£6.1m) ultimately cost Spurs the match, with Paul Pogba (£8.5m) picking up the loose ball and releasing Marcus Rashford (£7.4m) with a sublime, curling through-ball that the in-form England striker finished in style from a difficult angle.

United had arguably deserved their lead after an exhilarating first-half display in which they repeatedly hit Spurs at speed on the break, the advanced positions of Trippier and Ben Davies (£5.6m) often leaving the Red Devils with a three-on-two as they countered.

Anthony Martial (£7.3m) was a menace in the early stages of the match, exploiting the gaps left by Trippier with two early efforts and a key pass that led to a Rashford chance.

Rashford was chiefly stationed on the right flank of United’s front three but dovetailed beautifully with his fellow attackers in the opening 45 minutes, occasionally switching flanks with Martial as the two wingers fed off “false nine” Jesse Lingard (£6.8m).

Solskjaer explained his tactical tweak after full-time:

We attacked quickly with pace. Obviously, the goal was fantastically taken by Rashford, but you know the defensive job Jesse [Lingard] did and the pass from Paul [Pogba] is half the goal. The goal is why I put Anthony [Martial] and Rashford wide of Jesse because Jesse is more of a link player and he can drop in, whereas Rash and Anthony are more direct towards goal and that is why we put that plan in place and it worked.

We worked on it for a week and we have seen Spurs and we thought that was going to be a good plan and it is good that we have different ways of playing against different teams and I think that we showed that we are ready to compete, especially in the first half when I thought we were excellent.

The second half we could have scored two or three ourselves so it wasn’t that one-sided even though they really did put us under pressure.

The quality of Rashford’s winning goal underscored just how confident the youngster is at the moment and this was his sixth attacking return (four goals, two assists) in the five matches that Solskjaer has overseen.

Rashford was the most-bought player of Gameweek 22 and is set to repeat that trick ahead of this Saturday’s deadline, having been acquired by over 130,000 new FPL managers at the time of writing.

His manager paid tribute to the 21-year-old striker after the game:

It was a fantastically taken shot. It is a difficult skill. If it bounces for you then you can hit it on the outside, so you can curl it the other way, but this was as straight as a die. It is a fantastic finish that just shows practice makes perfect, because he has been practising lately in that position.

When you are 21, playing for Man United, scoring the goals he does, of course you are going to be confident. He has the right to be confident because he is playing at the top of his game at the moment.

Pogba was a real handful, flitting between a central midfield role in a 4-3-3 and a “number ten” position in a 4-2-3-1.

No United player had as many penalty box touches as the Frenchman at Wembley and over a quarter of Pogba’s touches in the opposition area this season have come in the last three Gameweeks, highlighting just how prominent he now is at the business end of the pitch.

The former Juventus midfielder drew a save from Hugo Lloris (£5.4m) with a header on 53 minutes and then forced an excellent tip over from his international team-mate with an attempted lob minutes later, going on to register twice as many efforts on goal as any other United asset.

Since Solskjaer took charge, Pogba has had seven more shots and six more attempts on target than any other FPL midfielder.

After two clean sheets in the opening 20 Gameweeks of the season, this was a second successive shut-out for United in the Premier League.

Paying tribute to his goalkeeper and defence, Solskjaer said:

[David was] fantastic. Obviously when you make 11 saves that is a top, top performance but then again I thought that one or two were really good saves and then the rest of them you would expect David to save. He is the best goalkeeper in the world, I have said it many times.

It is about positioning and concentration to be in the right position. Maybe one or two of them were uncatchable, but the saves he makes are because he is so in tune with the game. He is following the game, moving all the time. They don’t always look fantastic because he is in the right position.

We defended well as a team. Victor [Lindelof] and Phil [Jones] were excellent at centre-back. When you play against Harry Kane you will always be tested and when they put Llorente on I thought we defended well with Nemanja [Matic] and Ander [Herrera] in front of them. It was just a complete defensive team performance.

While Victor Lindelof (£4.8m) in particular deserved credit for yet another impressive performance at centre-back, this was still a fairly unconvincing clean sheet given the number of chances that Spurs carved out (12 in the United box alone).

That said, the value of an in-form de Gea is incalculable to United’s clean sheet prospects: the Red Devils kept the most shutouts (19) in the Premier League in 2017/18 despite having allowed exactly 200 more shots than their cross-city rivals did en route to 18 clean sheets.

Elsewhere on the injury front, Jan Vertonghen (£5.9m) returned for Spurs at centre-back but Alexis Sanchez (£10.0m) wasn’t fit enough to make the substitutes’ bench for the visitors.

Lucas Moura (£6.8m) also missed out with a knee problem.

As has been well-documented on these pages and elsewhere, Son Heung-min (£8.7m) now departs for the Asian Cup and will miss up to three FPL Gameweeks while on duty with South Korea.

Spurs XI (4-4-2 diamond): Lloris; Trippier, Alderweireld, Vertonghen, Davies; Winks (Llorente 81′), Sissoko (Lamela 43′), Eriksen, Alli; Son, Kane.

Manchester United XI (4-3-3): De Gea; Young, Lindelof, Jones, Shaw; Ander Herrera, Matic, Pogba (McTominay 90+2′); Lingard (Dalot 83′), Martial (Lukaku 73′), Rashford.

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