The problem is that we know what happens now. Eight World Cup qualifying games to come and Harry Kane will be among the goals.
He always is at this point and there is absolutely nothing about his domestic form or his fitness to suggest that it will be any different against Albania, Latvia, Andorra and Serbia.
In qualifying for Euro 2024, England’s captain scored eight times, failing in only two of eight matches. In helping England to the 2022 World Cup finals, he registered 12 times and missed out once. That’s 20 goals from his last 16 qualifying games.
It’s quite the record but whether any of that helps when - barring a disaster of unprecedented sporting scale - England arrive in America for World Cup 2026 is another thing altogether. Qualifying for FIFA’s first 48-team finals will resemble a turkey shoot for England. Their opponents are ranked 32, 65, 140 and 171 in the world.
But tournament football is different and when Lee Carsley - the coach who dropped a leaden-legged Kane for a game in Greece last autumn - said on this platform this week that ‘England are light at No 9’ this is in part what he meant.
Thomas Tuchel, the new England head coach, knows it too. Last week he nodded to problems with Kane dropping to the halfway line in search of possession by saying that he had no problem with his No 9 coming deeper, just not to the No 6 position.
It’s a conundrum for Tuchel and England for sure. Kane remains a phenomenal scorer of goals for Bayern Munich and the best finisher in the England squad. Equally, his increasing lack of mobility does not help England’s attacking shape.
It leaves them starved of an out-ball when they are under pressure, crowds the creativity of Jude Bellingham and others while also hampering England’s ability to counter quickly by stretching opponents.
In other words, it does little to help what Tuchel said he wanted from this group players last week - a style of football similar to the one they play weekly in the Premier League.
But Tuchel is going to find it devilishly hard to drop Kane. There is nobody available to him in Kane’s class when it comes to the essential business of putting the ball in the net. Dominic Solanke, Ollie Watkins and Ivan Toney are not even in Kane’s orbit and that takes us back to Carsley’s insinuated point. If not Kane then who?
On Thursday at a Tottenham training ground he knows so well, Kane addressed the issue of numbers and said: ‘I’ve scored 69 goals and when you score against Albania or Latvia, or these teams, people just expect it so it’s not spoken about so much.
‘If I was 25 now and doing what I’m doing, the excitement around me would maybe be a bit different to what it is now.
‘Maybe people just get a little bit bored of what you do, but I’m certainly not bored.
‘From early in my career, I’ve had to prove people wrong.
‘I think that will be with me until the end of my career.’
Kane will be almost 33 by the time the World Cup comes around. His numbers will have swelled by then. Whether England’s chances will inflate in parallel is another matter.
