Burnley: Dyche might have paid £7 million for a “world-class” talent who is now worth £100 million.
Had the Clarets acquired a productive striker in 2014, things might have gone very differently.
Burnley’s re-entry into the Premier League has been challenging, and one specific problem has been the lack of goals for Vincent Kompany’s team, who have scored just four goals in their first four league games.
Oh, how Zeki Amdouni, who joined from Swiss club Basel, represents something of a gamble given his lack of prior English football experience, how the Clarets wish they had a prolific presence to lead the line this season.
However, given that the club recently narrowly missed the opportunity to acquire England captain Harry Kane, Turf Moor may have been lining up with an almost certain supply of goals through the center in another world.
Why wasn’t Harry Kane signed by Burnley?
Even if it may seem far-fetched to think of now, there was a time when the former Tottenham Hotspur player might have ended himself in Lancashire after struggling to earn a spot in the first squad in north London.
There may have been concerns about Kane’s suitability for life at the top level following a string of inconsistent loan stints in the lower leagues, most notably scoring just twice in 15 games for Leicester City in 2013. In fact, then-boss Tim Sherwood even suggested that chairman Daniel Levy was willing to approve the sale of the academy graduate to the Foxes for just £600k.
The Turf Moor administration was then said to be on the prowl for the potential striker a year later, with Sean Dyche, who was in charge at the time, confirming that he had inquired about signing the kid in 2014.
Despite the current Everton manager’s interest, Dyche claimed that the Clarets were given a fee of roughly £7 million to be able to lure the Walthamstow native from N17, which was a costly asking price for a player who was largely “unproven.”
Burnley wanted to spend less than £3 million, which is what they finally did to acquire George Boyd. As a result, the deal never materialized, leaving the Lancashire team to wonder what might have been had the 6 foot 2 phenom signed with them.
What is Kane currently worth?
When Dyche’s team was relegated from the top division at the conclusion of the 2014–15 season, the same season in which Kane made his official debut with a stunning haul of 21 league goals for Spurs, that failure to recruit the budding scoring machine stinged immediately.
Despite the notion that he would only be a “one-season wonder” at the time, the ruthless marksman has made those skeptics appear somewhat foolish due to his success since then. As evidence of his own prowess, he is currently the top scorer for both his country and Spurs.
The 30-year-old chose to leave England in order to join Bayern Munich this summer, even though he is now only 47 goals behind Alan Shearer’s Premier League record total. The £412k per week diamond is still looking for his first big trophy to add to his numerous individual honors.
Kane was signed by the Bundesliga powerhouses for a reported fee of around £100 million, showing just how far he has come since those links to the Clarets almost ten years ago. Had the forward’s contract at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium not been about to expire, that sum probably would have been higher.
The 86-cap international is already making an immediate impact in his new environment as more evidence of just what a “world-class” talent” he is, according to pundit Graeme Souness, with five goals in only six games already under his belt in Germany.
In actuality, the Clarets’ transfer failure reflects a heartbreaking instance of “one that got away.”
