Dele Alli: Tottenham can cope without Harry Kane - look at our Champions League run

Tottenham fans must wrack their brains back to life before Harry Kane to remember a time when goals were this hard to summon. Not since Nov 2013 - five months before his first Premier League strike - have the club previously drawn three blanks on the bounce.

Dele Alli, still finding his feet at Milton Keynes Dons in those days, has never known anything like it. No wonder, then, that he cited more optimistic times to quell the grumbles following the 0-0 draw at Watford on Saturday - a third match without a goal in four winless league games since Kane's injury.

"People always have short term memories," said Alli, reminding supporters that this team was not so different than the one that had progressed to a Champions League final without their main man. "Look at when he got injured last time. Look what we did without him. We proved that it's about the team, not a single player. Harry is a fantastic player and he would be a miss to anyone."

Alli was one of the main culprits on Saturday, having missed a gilt-edged chance by heading over from eight yards, but his insistence that Kane's absence - "I don't think it's an issue" - is not being felt will fall on deaf ears with Tottenham's recruitment department. Brokering will surely intensify this week for a temporary replacement as time runs out in January's transfer window.

It is perhaps the systems most favoured by Jose Mourinho that illustrate why Kane's absence is being felt more painfully than during any of the other periods in which he has been on the sidelines. Tottenham enjoyed the lion's share of possession on Saturday, but Lucas Moura and Son Heung-min were repeatedly bullied out of possession without a main focal point in attack. Alli was a frustrated figure when he was replaced by Christian Eriksen, who appears on the verge of completing his long-awaited transfer to Inter Milan.

"Not enough runs in behind," was Alli's assessment. "Definitely not clinical enough. I look at myself first. I had that header and should have scored. The other attacking players may not be happy with the chances created as well... we weren't creative enough."

It had been 93 league games without a 0-0 draw for Tottenham, the second-longest such run in the competition - behind Manchester United's 114-game sequence that ended in May 2002. Had it not been for Troy Deeney's saved spot-kick by Paulo Gazzaniga, who dived low to his right to deny the Watford captain, it could have been much worse for Tottenham.

Tottenham did not play badly, but the kind of players Mourinho would normally like to pick are absent. Giovani Lo Celso is growing in stature but is no match physically for the likes of Abdoulaye Doucoure and Etienne Capoue. The recently recruited Gedson Fernandes hardly offered much more steel when he came on.

The diminutive Harry Winks is insistent, however, that he can pack enough punch long term in the Tottenham line up. "It is not always being about being 6ft 5in to fight and play football," he said. "Look at some of the best players in the world – they are not necessarily 6ft 5in but they are good players. Moussa Sissoko is a player we miss massively but just because of your size and height does not mean you cannot fight and cover the ground as well. Gedson has come in and even though he has only had a week with us he looks like a top player and somebody who will slot in well."

For Watford, another performance to breed confidence that they are far too good to go down. Nigel Pearson's seven-game record in the league now stands at four wins and two draws since the Liverpool defeat in his first game in charge.

"We know the margins are small," he said of the relegation outlook. "But as long as we go into games with a positive intent, and give a committed performance, I know we’ve got the ability and the tools in the box to get enough results."