The £54m genius Liverpool striker transfer that would cement side's Premier League dominance

His performance at Euro 2024 might have made a lot of English fans think otherwise, but Harry Kane is quietly playing some of the best football of his career – and certainly his most productive. But even though he has been a roaring success at Bayern Munich, there are now hints of a road map being laid down for his return to England.

A new report from The Daily Telegraph lays it out. Although, at 31, Kane is scoring and assisting goals at the best rate of his career in the Bundesliga, Bayern may already have started the process of succession planning. The story hints that the German giants have been taking a close look at some younger strikers such as Benjamin Šeško and Viktor Gyökeres, and could be ready to move Kane on before those legs finally start to tire – and a release clause in his contract could smooth the way.

Why Harry Kane could head back to the Premier League

Kane supposedly had a clause in his four-year contract which would have allowed him to leave for £67m in the January transfer window, and it will be active against next winter when it reduces to just £54m. Presumably, the clauses were intended to pave the way for Kane to leave if his foreign assignment went south, but he is reportedly happy in Bavaria and unless Bayern have taken leave of their senses, they will be happy with him.

Kane scored 44 goals and set up 12 more last season in all competitions, smashing his personal best of 41 goals for Tottenham Hotspur in three fewer games. This season, he has already scored 26 and provided another nine. On a minute-by-minute basis, those are both the best rates of his entire career.

One could suggest that the level of competition in Germany is slightly lower, but the blunt fact is that Kane is still a brilliant goalscorer and a complete number nine. There’s a valid question over how long he can keep it going, but he has had a career relatively unblemished by serious injuries and several other high-level players have been producing well into their thirties. Sports science can do some wondrous things these days.

The Telegraph article goes on to speculate about clubs which he could end up going to if Bayern do decide to move on prematurely in favour of a younger, perhaps slightly flashier model – but where could he really go?

The romantic choice would be to head back to Tottenham, and Spurs do have an option clause which gives them first refusal should Bayern accept an offer elsewhere. Kane himself may want to go back to the place where he is loved the most once he’s filled out his trophy cabinet a little bit – or, more accurately, found cause to build one in the first place – but the club’s current travails make one wonder whether his ambition wouldn’t take him to another club altogether. In any case, Spurs have signed Dominic Solanke to be their number nine for the foreseeable future. So where else makes sense?

Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea no longer make much sense

For several years, Kane was linked with a move to the same three Premier League clubs – Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea. The links were often tenuous and there is the sense that he never really came all that close to leaving until Bayern came in, but they would presumably be among the names hinted at should his time in Germany come to a close sooner rather than later.

Manchester City are almost certainly off the menu. Erling Haaland is committed to the club until 2034, rather remarkably, and is not the kind of striker who would benefit from having another number nine operate alongside him.

Chelsea make a lot more sense, given how badly they crave a consistent striker, but they operate on a very different recruitment model in the Boehly and Eghbali era, preferring young talents and targeting pace up front. To sign Kane would require a totally different approach to their transfer work.

Manchester United, meanwhile… Well, it depends on how bad the financial situation is. Ominous reports emanating from Old Trafford hint at serious concerns about staying within the boundaries of the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules following years of cash flow concerns. Furthermore, as they look to buy and sell their way towards a squad that even remotely suits Ruben Amorim, Kane would make an odd choice – not just because of his age, but because Amorim’s system demands a fast, hard-pressing forward who operates off the shoulder of the last man more often than not. That ‘quarter-back’ style of Kane’s, where he drops into pockets of space to provide for inside forwards, would be an awkward fit for a system which employs two number tens already.

So where else? Let’s rule out Arsenal, as much as they would love to have a player of his profile, because one gets the sense that Kane does have enough loyalty to his former employers not to go down that road. That would blow Sol Campbell’s ‘betrayal’ out of the water and seems highly unlikely to even be a consideration.

All of which leaves few options. A club buying Kane would need to have a lot of money available and be able to offer the chance of winning trophies, at least until the point at which his output starts to decline. Newcastle United, perhaps, were Arsenal to finally succeed in their long and thus far fruitless pursuit of Alexander Isak, and were Eddie Howe’s side to maintain their status as a top four contender? Nottingham Forest, even, if their astonishing season isn’t a flash in the pan?

And what about Liverpool? They aren’t known for spending big, but Kane is well suited to sides which play with a front three and they haven’t had a consistent goal-scoring centre-forward since Fernando Torres. Certainly, Kane is better than Darwin Núñez and Arne Slot may eventually tire of shoe-horning wingers like Cody Gakpo and Diogo Jota into a central role.

And if Mohammed Salah were to leave the club at the end of this season, he would take the single biggest source of goals the club has with him. His departure would spark the urgent need for a forward of some stripe who scores 20 or 30 a season, and there aren’t many like-for-like replacements on the market, if any. In a world in which Bayern sign Gyökeres and Salah heads off to Saudi Arabia, then interest in Kane from Anfield makes quite a lot of sense.

Perhaps – but the most likely result of all those release clauses and first refusals is simply that Kane stays with Bayern Munich, where he has proven that his tepid offerings last summer were just a blip in a stellar career, and unless there are sudden fitness issues or a remarkably rapid decline in his output, selling him simply wouldn’t make any sense. The Telegraph’s article is perhaps more excitable than plausible. Then again, football is a strange game. After all, who would have thought that Bayern would hire Vincent Kompany?