The problem is that we know what is happening now. Eight qualifying games in the World Cup and Harry Kane will be the goals.
He is always on this point and there is absolutely nothing about his domestic form or his suitability to suggest that it will be different against Albania, Latvia, Andorra and Serbia.
In the qualification for Euro 2024, the captain of England scored eight times and failed in just two of the eight games. By helping England with the 2022 World Cup final, he registered 12 times and missed once. That is 20 goals of his last 16 qualifying games.
It is quite the record, but whether something of that helps when – apart from a disaster of unprecedented gym – England in America arrives for World Cup 2026 is completely different. Being eligible for the first 48 team finals of FIFA resemble a turkey shoot for England. Their opponents are in 32, 65, 140 and 171 in the world.
But the tournament target is different and when Lee Carsley – the coach who can drop a lead – legs for a competition in Greece last fall – said this week that 'England is light on no. 9' This is partly what he meant.
Thomas Tuchel, the head coach of New England, knows it too. Last week he nodded for problems with Kane who dropped to half the line looking for possession by saying that he had no problem with his no. 9 that came deeper, just not to the no. 6 position.
It is certainly a mystery for Tuchel and England. Kane remains a phenomenal scorer of goals for Bayern Munich and the best Finisher in the English team. Likewise, his increasing lack of mobility does not help the attacking form of England.
It lets them be starved from an out-ball when they are under pressure, presses the creativity of Jude Bellingham and others, while also impeding England's ability to prevent opponents.
In other words, it does little to help what Tuchel said he wanted from these group players last week – a style of football similar to the person who play them every week in the Premier League.
But Tuchel will find it difficult to drop Kane. There is no one available to him in Kane's class when it comes to the essential matter of placing the ball in the net. Dominic Solanke, Ollie Watkins and Ivan Toney are not even in the track of Kane and that brings us back to the insinuated point of Carsley. If not kane than who?
On Thursday on a Tottenham training field he knows so well, Kane has tackled the issue of figures and said: 'I scored 69 goals and when you score against Albania or Latvia, or these teams, people just expect that there is not much talk about it.
'If I was 25 now and do what I do, the excitement around me might be a little different than what it is today.
'Maybe people are just a bit bored what you do, but I am certainly not bored.
'From early in my career I had to prove that people are 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. His figures will be swollen by that time. Whether the opportunities of England will blow up parallel is another matter.
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