Kane becomes Spurs’ joint-top scorer

When an 18-year-old Harry Kane scored his first goal for Tottenham Hotspur, against Shamrock Rovers in the group stage of the Europa League in 2011, few would have predicted there would be 265 more to come.

Not even those Spurs fans in the corner of Craven Cottage here belting out “one-season wonder”, the ironic chant mocking all those who refused to believe that early version of Kane would be anything more than a flash in the pan, could have foreseen the consistency, quality and sheer number of goals that lay ahead.

This one might not even make it into the top 50 of Kane’s career but it was still a peach, worthy of equalling Jimmy Greaves’s Tottenham record and a fitting summary of Kane’s best qualities: his vision, touch, strength and then that laser accuracy for the finish.

There was mental fortitude too, given Antonio Conte, the Tottenham head coach, later said Kane was playing with a fever.

Greaves’s mark stood for more than half a century and he might have enjoyed pointing out that his 266 strikes came in 379 games, while Kane has needed 415 to reach the same tally.

The Tottenham fans might hope for a triple, even quadruple, century in their colours but that will depend on how Kane sees his future now, with his contract due to expire next year.

Champions League qualification is surely the bare minimum if Kane is to stay and this was a reassuring win for Spurs in that regard, something more stable and predictable in a week in which the positions of Conte, Kane and the club’s director of football, Fabio Paratici, have all come under scrutiny.

Fulham were powerless to stop Kane but for much of this game they were more than a match for Tottenham, lacking only the subtlety in the final third to make their authority count. Marco Silva, the Fulham head coach, insists the club’s only target should be survival but this was further evidence that his players can have European football in their sights.