Tomorrow all Premier League eyes will fall on the evening game between Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur at the Etihad Stadium. Can Mauricio Pochettino’s side get a result against the champions to give hope to the rest of the division or will the game be another cakewalk for Pep Guardiola’s men?
The opening weekend of the season saw a number of games where the margin of victory flattered the teams on the winning side. Manchester United were not worth a four-nil win against Chelsea, Southampton were in the game at Burnley before a twelve-minute meltdown, Brighton twice hit Watford on the break as the home side chased the game and even Norwich might have felt hard done by, having caused Liverpool’s back four a few problems on Friday night. However, it is fair to say that Manchester City's five-nil thumping of West Ham neither flattered the winners nor did an injustice to the losers. This was, after all, the fourth season in a row that Pep Guardiola's side have scored at least four goals at the London Stadium, we should have seen it coming and many people probably did.
In fact, one feature of Pep’s time at City is the relentless nature in which they began each of his first three seasons. It is a quite staggering record. Where are the early season blips? The games that all other teams seem to have, where new signings *'need a game or two to bed in'*, or *'a few of the lads are a bit tired after the World Cup'*. Since Pep Guardiola took charge City are taking an average of 2.66 points per game over the first seven games of the season, they are outscoring their opponents by 2.9 goals to 0.62 and have dropped just seven points.
So what of Tottenham's chances tomorrow night? It would, of course, be easy to write them off completely and the sad likelihood is that Manchester City will win and continue their inevitable domination of English football, however, there are a few factors in favour of the Londoners. Firstly, Spurs are the last team to beat Manchester City in any game of football since January 29th. Their one-nil Champions League quarter-final win was a big blow to City and even though they lost the second-leg four-three it was enough to see Spurs into the semis and ultimately reach the final that Pep Guardiola so badly craves. Football is a lot about confidence and momentum and the memories of that crazy tie in April will surely give Spurs a reason to believe.
Secondly, Tottenham are a good football team. More than that, Tottenham are widely expected to be the third-best team in the country this year. They have a good squad of footballers, their defence is solid, they have strengthened in midfield over the summer and Harry Kane has hit the ground running scoring two great goals last Saturday. Yes, they lost both EPL games against City last season but both matches ended one-nil, the narrowest of margins separating the sides. If the third-best selection of footballers in the country can't reasonably be expected to give the best a decent game then we might as well all switch off and watch the cricket.
Lastly, and I'll admit that this is tenuous, but you see that loss in the graphic way back up there... the one scar that looms over Pep Guardiola's near-perfect Premier League starts? That was a defeat against Tottenham Hotspur on the 2nd October 2016. City had won their first six matches of Pep's first season and it looked like they would run away with it. After that defeat to Spurs, the wheels kinda came off for City. Just three wins in the next eight games and a title challenge slowly drifted out of their reach. This might be a different Manchester City, an all-conquering machine, but everybody's gotta lose sometimes, could this be the weekend?
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