Guardiola’s men have upper hand but history’s with Spurs
ARSENAL players have turned into Tottenham fans ahead of Manchester City’s pivotal trip to Spurs tomorrow.
“I am going to be the biggest fan of Tottenham ever!” said Kai Havertz yesterday. “Let’s hope for the best.”
The Gunners need a favour from their rivals and Mikel Arteta has warned “anyone can beat anyone”, but they could be forgiven for fearing the worst.
While Spurs returned to winning ways with a 2-1 victory against Burnley on Saturday, Ange Postecoglou’s side looked far from back to their best. On the face of it, the chances of a positive result against City appear bleak.
City have won seven straight Premier League games since their goalless draw with Arsenal, scoring 28 goals in the process.
But Tottenham have been Pep Guardiola’s bogey team, winning five of the last 10 meetings, and City have suffered four defeats and scored zero goals in their four Premier League games at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Facing City also seems to bring the best out of Heung-min Son, who is badly out of form but has been a constant thorn in their side and has four goals and three assists in his last nine meetings with the champions.
Spurs will need Son on song if they are to get a result and their other attackers must raise their levels, too, with Brennan Johnson, Dejan Kulusevski and James Maddison offering little in the way of output in recent weeks.
Just as well, then, that defenders Pedro Porro and Micky van de Ven took up that mantle and scored the goals on Saturday.
Tomorrow, though, Van de Ven and
centre-back partner Cristian Romero must focus on their aerial duels with Erling Haaland and limiting the space afforded to the league’s form player, Phil Foden.
Despite an injury crisis at left-back, where Destiny Udogie and Ben Davies are both out, Postecoglou has stumbled on a good makeshift understudy in the form of Oliver Skipp.
Superb against Burnley, he looks set to start there again tomorrow.
The way Postecoglou’s inverted fullbacks play means Skipp, a midfielder by trade, can step inside and be an extra player in the middle — crucial when up against Kevin De Bruyne and Rodri.
And after two games on the bench, there were some encouraging moments from Maddison as he returned to the team on Saturday.
At one point he looked to be slipping to the turf but kept his balance, sped past Jacob Bruun Larsen, and played a lovely give-and-go with Yves Bissouma.
Snappy passing between Maddison and Bissouma had the beating of Burnley’s midfield.
It will be even more important against City.