Roberto Soldado vs. Harry Kane: Tottenham Hotspur Stats Battle

A little over 12 months ago Harry Kane broke into Tottenham's first team with a string of impressive displays in an otherwise underwhelming team. 

Scoring three goals in three starts, it seemed as if Spurs had at least found a player to back up first-team striker Roberto Soldado. 

Bleacher Report correspondent Allan Jiang was among Soldado's vocal critics even then, calling him the "Spanish Sergei Rebrov" in reference to his high price tag and low output. 

Former Spurs manager Tim Sherwood was already convinced that Kane was the superior player, as he told the Standard in October. 

Today there is no doubting that Kane is a far superior player to his Spanish rival. Diving into the numbers only underscores that point. 

The simplest statistical comparison of strikers is their goal return. 

In that regard, there is little doubt of which is superior. 

Kane has scored 24 goals in 45 Premier League appearances, while Soldado has just seven in 51. 

In all competitions, it is comparably stark. There Kane's advantage is 36 in 77 to Soldado's 16 in 77. 

Not only is Kane's accumulation of goals far superior to Soldado's, his rate of scoring is among the best in the Premier League. According to the Daily Mail's analysis, Kane had the fourth-best rate of scoring among all players in England's top flight. His one goal in every 103 minutes of play is bettered only by Crystal Palace striker Glenn Murray, Arsenal's Olivier Giroud and Newcastle forward Papiss Cisse.  

In the most unpleasant of comparisons, Soldado managed just one goal every two months. 

Kane even struck up the second-most prolific link-up in the league, via WhoScored.com. He and Nacer Chadli linked up on four occasions. Only Chelsea pair Cesc Fabregas and Diego Costa formed a more devastating pair. 

Whoscored.com's metric gives Soldado a rating of 6.24, which is disappointing but not disastrous. Only when compared to Kane's 7.24 does it again fail to make the grade. 

When Soldado was toiling through his first season in England, he showed signs of adapting his game into a playmaking role. Any hopes that would continue in Year 2 dried up quickly. Their respective assist totals for the season of four (Kane) and one (Soldado) are predictably divergent. 

Assists are often only as effective as the players playing alongside the creator so the metric of chances created is often preferred. 

Matthias Schrader/Associated Press

Once again, though, it is Kane who is vastly superior. He created three times the number of scoring chances as Soldado (27 to nine), according to Squawka. At least there was parity in the Europa League, where both players made six chances for their team-mates. 

Transfermarkt's valuations of Kane and Soldado are instructive. Soldado's market value has halved in the past 24 months while Kane's has increased an astonishing 3,000 percent. 

There is little joy in this exercise, but it is certainly illustrative of the fact that Soldado is a vastly inferior player. 

At this point, Soldado is little more than a punchline as former Tottenham striker and football pundit Gary Lineker observed in March. 

"

Audience questions after Paxman is like when Spurs bring on Soldado for Harry Kane.

— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) March 26, 2015"

It does deserve to be mentioned that Soldado's one advantage over Kane is his experience. He has scored more than 200 goals in his career. Nearly 150 of those have come in Spain or England's top divisions. 

Matt Dunham/Associated Press

Even now, after his disastrous two years in England, he has a career scoring rate just under a goal every two games. 

Kane is closer to one in three. 

Of course, most of the games Kane has played in his career have come as a youth-team player, a substitute or an out-of-position replacement. Despite those handicaps, and his inexperience, he is rapidly whittling down that number. 

Soldado is not a worthless player. He is, though, a player that has proven to entirely lack the requisite skills and mental capacity to thrive in England. 

There are no statistics to defend Soldado's time in England and the sooner that time is ended, the better.