Harry Kane - Best English striker ever?

And Arsenal let him go

If I wanted one striker from history to score a couple against a team of unfit quadriplegics then Kane would be top of my list. If it was against some of the best defenders around, I may have to consider someone else.

But playing as a 6 or an 8 is nothing to do with being a striker, which is the question.

As an all round player, probably Kane, but as a striker, the number 9 role, then there's loads of them who were equally top drawer, Michael Owen at his best, people forget how good he was, so good he won the Balon Do'r!, I don't think Kane has ever won it. There was Fowler, Sheringham, Andy Cole, all goal machines.

Lineker was a great finisher

If you want all round then Shearer is up there

A provider then Peter beardsley

Undoubtedly Kane is very good, top drawer, but he's not
really done it under pressure at top level.

Win world Cup, or champions league and we can look again.

Apart from platt ,, wrighty was unlucky that Shearer was about  ..wrightys from my area , loved by most, says it how it is

How many goals has harry scored without falling to the ground after scoring,,,

For me he's England's best striker for the last 50 years.  And I wouldn't go back further than that anyway, as sport didn't become really professional until the 70s,  I'd say he's England's best player over that period (not by a mile) because of his longevity and conistency.  At his best Gascoigne was England's greatest talent over those 50 years, but alas we didn't get enough of it.  He's no Maradonna Messi or Ronaldo, but then those three are on a different level to everyone else.

Typically in football you score 1 goal every 9 or 10 shots.  Kane is 3 out of 10 in the BL this season.  Three times the average over a huge sample.  Admittedly he takes their pens but re pens he is 24 out of 24 in the BL over 3 seasons and has a better penalty record than any other elite striker (I think)

Yep, Kane is like 3 players in one.

Shearer was good, Owen was good for a short time, but you are taking us as fools if you think the others are remotely close to Kane and neither had a long top class career.  Kane got to two Euros final a WC SF and a QF.  Owen and Shearer achieved next to nothing with England by comparison

How can you in one breath say I'm taking you for fools when in the other, you're being deliberately deceptive by comparing goal conversion rates between strikers from two completely different leagues, one being much stronger than the other, and then not only do you ignore it when you're pulled up on it, you then double down and start fattening up Kane's case again using his international record in which he won nothing but enjoyed 3 cakewalk draws to both Euro finals and the WC semi, incidentally forgetting bottling the penalty v France at the Qatar World Cup. He won the Goldon boot in Russia after scoring 4 penalties and was a passenger at Euro 2024.

The question is, who is England's best ever striker, not all round player, not who has the best international record and not comparing their records based on a whole array on differing circumstances and conditions.

Kane is a great striker, but he's not the stand out best ever English striker, in my lifetime I'd take Shearer up top, if you really want a 6, 8, 9 and 10 in rolled into one then OK, but that's not the original question.

He watches too much NFL, thinks he's some kinda of quarter back, always dropping deep, it takes away from what more he can give up front anyway.

Kane may have got to two euro finals a world cup semi not to mention champions league finals and club semi finals but failed to turn up in any of them you also never saw shearer linekar and owen dropping back to the edge of there own box thereby slowing everything down thinking he’s a kid in a playground until he does it when it matters then maybe he can be classed as a great not now

Kane's good, but Shearer was miles better. Kane's stats are just massively inflated by the far higher number of international games, most of which are against dross.

This season England have got 10 games from September till the start of the World Cup. 30 years ago that figure was 6. It was 5 ten years before that.

He's excelled at scoring goals against the dregs of the international world. His records ok against the top teams is decent but he's at his best when he's marked by a plumber from the third world.


And it's the same in Germany. The Bundesliga is cr@p lately. It's a one horse town. Look at the state of those "hugely promising" Bundesliga players who cost Premier League teams a fortune last summer. They're binmen.



I think those old enough would generally say Jimmy Greaves was an incredible striker. I personally think Shearer was incredibly complete and had a great career, even if he never spent time at a top tier club, and continued to be a star after a couple of really bad injuries. Talking of whicj, I'll always think the most naturally gifted English striker was Robbie Fowler. He could do anything, saw chances a second before everyone else and had the touch of an Argie #10. But he got two bad knee injuries and was never near the same.

Kane has played nearly FIFTY more times for England than Shearer, you can't keep using statistics that are misleading.

Kane is right up there with the best English strikers imo, but not because he's banged in 100 goals in the mickey mouse league scored a boat load of England goals against door to door salesman from Andorra, San Marino bricklayers or Goat herders from Panama, but because of his finishing ability, vision and awareness, hence a lot of assists as well. It comes down to preference, I think Shearer who never really deviated away from his number 9 role, would have scored a lot more goals if he was surrounded at club level by the quality Bayern have, but he went to Newcastle instead of Man United.

When Shearer was playing the PL was not the top league in Europe.

Again, not that that stat's the be all and end all, but in how many appearances?

I'm not saying Kane's bad. Just think Shearer was better, and also that Fowler had more ability. And we should really mention Rooney too. Every players has to be viewed in context. Shearer was only briefly part of a good England team. They didn't qualify for 94 and 98 was over quickly enough. But then the amount of top class strikers around at that time was ridiculous.


Kane's probably the opposite. Over a ten-year period the England team has never been as good as it has been with him. And while it's been a good team he's had next to no competition for his shirt. And obviously the number of international games has ballooned, particularly against mediocre teams just to fill up the calendar. While the likes of Man Utd would be pulling their top players out of those squads, Kane was always available.

Club careers were maybe fairly similar. Both at 2nd-tier teams mostly, scored lots of goals but only briefly competed for the big honours. I imagine in his heart, Shearer wishes he'd chosen differently. Kane's swansong in Germany has brought those trophies, but the Bundesliga is awful at the minute. Bayern have won the league easing off by double digits for the last few years, as the other teams can't afford to keep hold of their talent. It's more akin to the French league than the English one.