Jamie’s Stat Preview: Man City v Spurs

Tottenham travel up north to the Etihad Stadium to face league leaders Manchester City on Sunday.

Spurs will, obviously, be looking for revenge, following their mauling at the hands of Sunday’s hosts in their second game of the season. City, meanwhile, will be claiming that the two teams are all square in the revenge stakes after Peter Crouch’s 82nd minute winner secured Spurs Champion’s League football at the expense of their hosts in 2009/10.

Apart from very recent times, City have well and truly been Tottenham’s whipping boys, especially at Manchester. In 14 league meetings between the clubs at both the Etihad Stadium and Maine Road, Tottenham have notched up nine wins, whilst the Sky Blues have only managed a paltry three. In the process, the Lilywhites have banged in 19 goals, whilst City have only put 13 away.

In total, Manchester City have only scored 28 goals to Tottenham’s 41, and let’s not forget that ten of those City goals came in just two matches, this season’s debacle and in 1994 when they ran out 5-2 winners at Maine Road.

The goalscoring charts make for fairly familiar reading. Top of the pile are Spurs stalwarts Jermaine Defoe and Robbie Keane with five each, although Edin Dzeko is just one goal behind, following his four goal contribution in August.

The two clubs have met twice in January over the years, with Spurs winning both games and City failing to register so much as a goal.

Only twice have Tottenham failed to score a goal away at Manchester City, and one of them was a goalless draw, so the chances of Defoe, Bale, VDV, Mordric etc. getting on the scoresheet is really quite high.

Tottenham will be going all guns blazing in this match in order to avoid going down in history as the first Spurs side to allow City to do the double over them. The recent odds are against the London club as they haven’t beaten their title rivals since that Champion’s League shoot out at the Etihad Stadium 20 months ago.

And finally, if you are a betting person, you might be interested in having a cheeky flutter on a correct scoreline of 2-1. In the 29 meetings between the two sides, it has finished 2-1 on nine occasions and, between March 2005 and May 2009, the game finished with that exact scoreline a remarkable eight times out of nine, with seven scores of 2-1 in a row.

By Jamie Frier

Keep up to date with all the latest Tottenham news and opinion by following SpursWeb’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.

Have something to tell us about this article? Let us know