Harry Kane masterclass gives Man City and Pep Guardiola dilemma of mixed transfer messages

And so it finished Manchester City 2-3 The Narrative.

Harry Kane’s matchwinning masterclass at the Etihad Stadium served up a delicious story arc, or a sicking gut-punch of "let’s have a look at what you could have won" — depending on your perspective.

Then there was the post-match revelry on Sky Sports, with Kane interviewed via the medium of innuendo, talk of “what went on last summer" as if he was the victim of a natural disaster rather than a man who tried and shambolically failed to engineer an exit from his football club.

But strip away the fluff and City’s title aspirations are in the balance because of the brilliance of their number one transfer target from last year.

It sounds like the sort of scenario that points towards an obvious course of action for Pep Guardiola this coming close season, but it’s not actually that simple.

Big performance in the big spaces

Kane threaded a majestic through-ball that led to Dejan Kulusevski’s early opener, showcasing the huge development in his game over the past couple of years.

The England captain has long been a prolific goalscorer but his capacity to drop deep, link play and arrow Kevin De Bruyne-esque passes through a defence has really caught the eye.

No doubt those are qualities that massively appeal to Guardiola but City are not short of players who can do such things.

Additionally, were Kane to join City, he would never play in a team that had 28.5 per cent possession and were restricted to seven touches in the opposition penalty area.

He was clinical, brilliant and decisive, but he would never be able to perform quite like that for City. That isn’t to say he couldn’t be very useful indeed.

Cross purposes

When City were flailing away at the Tottenham defence