Spurs nearly signed unreal £50m ace for free, now he's teammates with Kane

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It would be fair to say that Tottenham Hotspur's start to the Premier League season hasn't been ideal.

Ange Postecoglou's men have played some entertaining and attacking football, but a lack of cutting-edge has cost them.

Granted, summer signing Dominic Solanke has missed the last two games and is set to return for the North London Derby. However, it still feels like they haven't fully replaced Harry Kane, which could well be an impossible task.

The Englishman was outrageously effective in his final season with the club and has taken to life in the Bundesliga like a duck to water.

Interestingly, one of his new teammates previously had a trial with Spurs, and in another universe, he would be tearing it up under Postecoglou.

Kane's last two seasons

The thing about players like Kane is that once they break onto the scene, they are generally impressive every season, but among the mess that was Antonio Conte's final year at Spurs, it felt like the England captain once again stepped up to another level.

Perhaps it was because he knew he would be leaving in the summer, or maybe it was a desire to salvage what was a disappointing campaign for the club. However, whatever the reason was, the Walthamstow-born poacher was immense.

In just 49 games, he scored 32 goals, provided five assists and, had it not been for the inhuman Erling Haaland, he would have finished as the league's top scorer.

Unsurprisingly, the England centurion's incredible form carried on in Germany, and if anything, he took yet another step forward - even if his title curse remains as strong as ever.

In just 45 matches for Bayern Munich, he scored 44 goals and provided 12 assists, meaning he maintained an average goal involvement every 0.80 games; in other words, he produced 1.24 per game.

The former Spurs captain looks ready to go again this season and has a new exciting teammate to play alongside him, a teammate who was once on trial with his former club.

Spurs missed out on Michale Olise

Yes, while it might surprise some, the player in question is French international Michael Olise.

In an interview with BerkshireLive, former Spurs youth coach Mehmet Ali revealed that as a teenager, the talented winger had trials with the North Londoners and Manchester City before joining Reading, where he impressed enough to earn an £8m move to Crystal Palace in 2021.

In South London, the "world-class" dynamo, as dubbed by Micah Richards, had his fair share of injury problems, but when he was on the pitch, his quality was undeniable, and in his final season for the Eagles he racked up an impressive haul of ten goals and six assists in 19 games.

That means he maintained an average of a goal involvement every 1.18 games, which was enough to tempt Bayern into splashing £50m on him during the summer, and it's not hard to see him thriving alongside a player like Kane in the years to come.

Ultimately, spotting talent in young players is one of the hardest things to do in football, and while Olise is undoubtedly one who got away for Spurs, they are well-placed with Postecoglou at the helm to attract plenty of talented youngsters in the years to come - you only have to look at the signing of Archie Gray this summer to see that.