Chris Ramsey says it would be "a dream come true" for Spurs and QPR if Harry Kane and Charlie Austin formed an England strike force
The Rangers boss and former Spurs coach challenged top-flight clubs to value English players just as highly as big-money imports with "exotic names". Ramsey helped guide Kane from academy starlet to Barclays Premier League goal machine at Spurs, and reckons the Walthamstow-born forward fully deserves an England call-up. Head coach Ramsey will face former employers Spurs in Saturday's league clash at Loftus Road, claiming he is "not kryptonite" for Tottenham despite inside-knowledge of the club's thriving youth products.
"That would be a dream come true for most people from those two clubs," Ramsey said of a Kane-Austin England partnership. "I think they are both very good players, both hard-working, both very focused, and I'm sure that they would be a match for any defence if they played together."
He added: "Because managers are under pressure, they tend to stick to what would be seen as the tried and tested expensive players, when we do have a lot of good English players who could play in the Premier League, gain the experience.
"They can play on the international stage, and let's treat them the same way that we treat the more exotic-named players. "Because if we don't give them the experience to play in the Premier League we're never, ever going to be able to have a strong national team.
"We need to be able to treat them the same way, be able to give them the same stick, instead of treating them more harshly than the players that earn a lot more money, and cost a lot more money."
Kane is now on the verge of a call-up to Roy Hodgson's senior squad, but Ramsey admitted Tottenham came under fire for preferring the homespun striker to Roberto Soldado and Emmanuel Adebayor last season. Ramsey spent a decade at Spurs, ending up as a senior first-team coach, but left the club at the same time as manager Tim Sherwood in May 2014.
The 52-year-old hailed Kane's 24-goal haul at Spurs this term, and accepted relegation-battling QPR must be at their peak to contain the in-form frontman.
"First of all it was me, Tim (Sherwood) and Les (Ferdinand) who were involved in the coaching and the dealing with that," Ramsey said. "Harry probably learned quite a bit from Les in the training sessions we did there.
"When you're working with developing players, you have to dream alongside the player: if you don't you're not believing in what you're teaching. "Has Harry Kane surprised me? No.
"Sometimes you need an opportunity to play. "When we played him at the back end of last year, the fans weren't having it, were they? They were trying to get the galacticos on the pitch.
"We had to stick to our guns and we got a lot of flak for it." On taking on his old club this weekend, the R's boss added: "I wouldn't say I'm one of the best-equipped managers to know how to handle these young Tottenham players - I'm not kryptonite for them. "I haven't got any special formulas to stop them, other than maximising the abilities of the players that we've got here. "I know their strengths, and that's the thing that you need to be mindful of - their strengths."
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