MAN CITY V TOTTENHAM
SUNDAY, 4.30PM, SKY SPORTS
AFTER a rather eventful week for these two clubs, they contest the Carabao Cup final with some kind of normality and certainty returned to English football. For now.
Last Sunday’s announcement of plans for a European Super League chucked a grenade at the beautiful game until Manchester City were the first of the 12 clubs to officially withdraw from the process. Tottenham soon followed, although they have had one or two other issues to preoccupy them this week.
With just six days until the final, they axed manager Jose Mourinho after a miserable second half of the season saw them fall out of Champions League contention.
Perhaps they feared winning the cup – unlikely as that may have seemed against a side seeking a fourth successive victory in the competition – would have given Mourinho the leverage he needed to either keep his job or secure a bigger pay-off.
Having insisted the sacking was purely results-based, Spurs handed 29-year-old Ryan Mason the reins for the rest of the campaign – six league matches, in addition to the Wembley showpiece.
Mason began well enough, Heung-min Son’s late penalty securing a 2-1 victory over Southampton in midweek, but will be desperate to have Harry Kane on the pitch after an ankle problem forced him to watch that game from the stands.
‘We know he is doing absolutely everything he can to be back out on the football pitch,’ said Mason, whose playing career ended following a serious head injury in 2017.
The new broom seems to have swept Gareth Bale off the naughty step and, after his equaliser against the Saints, the final provides him with an opportunity to give Spurs’ fans a fond reason to remember his second spell with the club.
It also offers Phil Foden – City’s man of the match in last season’s final against Aston Villa – another chance to showcase the skills so evident again as they came from behind to beat the same opponents in midweek.
City playmaker Kevin De Bruyne’s words in opposition to the proposed breakaway about him ‘still being a little boy who loves football’ resonated with many.
It is time for football to do the talking once more in a final full of intriguing sub-plots.