Spursvs.Man City

Ange Postecoglou's men sent Burnley back down to the Championship thanks to a 2-1 come-from-behind success on Saturday, not long after their visitors briefly reclaimed top spot courtesy of a 4-0 crushing of Fulham.

Match preview

Four straight defeats in the Premier League momentarily looked set to become a miserable five on the spin for a tepid Tottenham during the opening exchanges of their battle with Burnley, who required nothing fewer than three points to keep their hopes of a miraculous escape alive for at least a couple of hours.

However, just seven minutes after Jacob Bruun Larsen had opened the scoring, Spurs hit back through Pedro Porro - making amends for his role in the Clarets' strike - before another lauded defender in Micky van de Ven, Spurs' Player of the Season, finished like a veteran centre-forward to complete the turnaround.

In addition to ensuring that Burnley would be playing second-tier football in 2024-25, Spurs' victory saw the fifth-placed Lilywhites cut the deficit to fourth-placed Aston Villa down to four points, and their Champions League hopes will still be kicking by the time Tuesday rolls around if Liverpool glean at least a point at Villa Park on Monday.

Victory for the Lions and Tottenham will officially be out of the top-four running, although Postecoglou has stressed on numerous occasions that rising above that desired dotted line is not the ultimate goal for his side in his debut campaign, one in which Spurs have set a new club record in the Premier League era.

Indeed, fighting back to beat Burnley means that Tottenham have now rescued 25 points from losing positions in the 2023-24 Premier League - their highest tally in the competition and second only to Liverpool's 28 this term - and the seemingly endless run of Spurs home matches seeing both teams score now stands at 14 top-flight games.

Conceding the first goal in each of their last five matches does not bode well for a Tottenham side who may have mixed feelings about taking points off of Manchester City, whose traditional end-of-season surge saw them finally bump Arsenal off the gold medal position on Saturday lunchtime.

The newly-prolific Josko Gvardiol came up with two of the Citizens' four strikes at Fulham's Craven Cottage base, where FWA Player of the Year Phil Foden and Julian Alvarez also got in on the act; the latter calmly dispatched a penalty after Gvardiol passed up the opportunity to become the Premier League's first hat-trick-scoring defender.

Gvardiol unselfishly allowed penalty-taker Alvarez to fulfil his 12-yard duties, perhaps also taking City's inferior goal difference into account, and the treble winners established a two-point advantage over Arsenal with their seventh-straight Premier League win, but their formerly noisy neighbours could not do them a favour on Sunday.

Indeed, Arsenal's scrappy 1-0 win over Manchester United took the Gunners back to top spot and re-established their one-point lead over the champions, who must prevail on Tuesday if they are to be in control of their title destiny on May 19.

Another fresh page of club history could be written at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, though, as Man City have never won eight successive Premier League matches by at least two goals before, and they edged out Spurs 1-0 in North London in January's FA Cup tie.

However, the Premier League hoodoo still hangs over the men in sky blue, as they have only prevailed in one of their last five top-flight games against Tottenham and have never won a Premier League match at Spurs' new stadium, although some Lilywhites supporters may happily relinquish that record if it means no title parade for Arsenal.

Team News

Tottenham striker Richarlison was a surprise omission from the Brazil squad for the 2024 Copa America, although national team coach Dorival Junior explained that the ex-Everton man had picked up a calf problem, which was confirmed by Postecoglou at the weekend.

The fact that Richarlison's problem is serious enough to rule him out of the continental tournament suggests that he will not be available for Spurs' last two Premier League games, joining Timo Werner (hamstring), Ben Davies (calf), Manor Solomon (knee), Ryan Sessegnon (thigh), Fraser Forster (ankle) and Destiny Udogie (thigh) on that list.

After a couple of Emerson Royal disaster classes, Postecoglou experimented with Oliver Skipp at left-back for the visit of Burnley, but the 23-year-old's relative lack of minutes and tight turnaround means that Emerson might come back in; Postecoglou is reluctant to play Van de Ven out wide due to his injury issues this term.

Speaking of versatile defenders encountering fitness problems, only a quarter of the game had gone at Craven Cottage before Guardiola had to pull Nathan Ake out of the match; the Dutchman's injury has not been specified, but he was in visible discomfort.

It remains to be seen if Ake's problem will be severe enough to hinder his participation here, but he ought to be the champions' only absentee if so; Jack Grealish should return from the illness that kept him out of Saturday's success.

Thankfully for Guardiola, he can negate the possible loss of Ake by simply recalling Kyle Walker and shifting Manuel Akanji or the returning John Stones to a central role, and the Catalan coach may also try to take advantage of Spurs' left-back losses by reintroducing the tricky Jeremy Doku.

Tottenham Hotspur possible starting lineup:

Vicario; Porro, Romero, Van de Ven, Emerson; Bissouma, Bentancur; Kulusevski, Maddison, Johnson; Son

Manchester City possible starting lineup:

Ederson; Walker, Stones, Dias, Gvardiol; Silva, Rodri, De Bruyne; Doku, Haaland, Foden

We say: Tottenham Hotspur 1-3 Manchester City

One thing is nearly always a guarantee in Tottenham's Premier League home matches - both teams finding the back of the net - but the goalmouth action ought to be more prevalent around the Tottenham box as they struggle to shut up shop.

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