When can Harry Kane break Jimmy Greaves’ Tottenham record?

When Jimmy Greaves scored the last of his 266 goals for Tottenham Hotspur in 1970, he had racked up 58 more than Bobby Smith, the next most prolific player in the club’s history.

However, he wasn’t entirely satisfied with his final haul. “If I’d scored every goal I should have scored and missed,” he later mused, “and missed every one I did score, my record would have been the best in history by far.”

Greaves has stood out on his own for 53 years but Harry Kane has been clawing his way towards the legendary figure with an unrelenting scoring rate his predecessor would admire (and probably have a sly comment about as well).

A typically crisp finish to decide Tottenham’s FA Cup third-round tie against Portsmouth took Kane to 265 goals with a cockerel on his chest. With the outright record just two goals away here’s when and where Kane could lay claim to being the greatest goalscorer in Tottenham’s history.

Aside from a final, there is perhaps no better stage for Kane to make Tottenham history than the impending north London derby.

As a former Arsenal academy player, Kane was released because he “was a bit chubby” and “wasn’t very athletic” according to Liam Brady, who was in charge of the Gunners’ youth system at the time.

Not that Kane needs any more motivation to find the net against Arsenal – the 29-year-old is the all-time top scorer in the century-plus history of the derby.

If Kane can’t overtake Greaves against the Gunners, he won’t have long to wait before another fitting setting presents itself.

Not only does Tottenham’s trip to the Etihad Stadium represent a head-to-head with the reigning Premier League champions, but Kane has a muddy past with Manchester City. Tottenham’s vice-captain spent so much of the summer of 2021 batting his eyelids in City‘s direction that it temporarily tainted his previously saintly status among some Tottenham fans.

By the time Spurs finished their meeting with City at the Etihad in February, Kane was very much back in the good books. In the dying embers of a bonkers match, Kane completed his brace with a 95th-minute winner to remind Pep Guardiola of what he missed out on.