Tottenham Hotspur will play their first North London derby of the new season a week on Sunday.
Firstly, Spurs must look to focus on the visit of Newcastle United this weekend before their attentions turn to a trip to the Emirates.
It would be fair to say that in both of Tottenham’s opening top flight matches against Aston Villa and Manchester City they have failed to hit top gear.
It took Christian Eriksen to come off the bench in the second half against Villa to help turn the tide of the game while Spurs had to ride out the storm at the Etihad to escape with a draw.
Ahead of the match against Newcastle, Mauricio Pochettino was asked if he would use this weekend’s fixture as an opportunity to experiment with his team to prepare to face their rivals.
Pochettino was certainly in no answer to entertain the question and spun his answer by insisting that he is just a football manager rather than a scientist or a chemist.
He told Football.London: Experiment? I’m not a scientist. I am not a chemist. You are talking about experimenting. That is in some room outside of this training room. We are coaches and we do our job, we don’t experiment. We train people that have the ability to play football. Then that’s it. Please don’t compare us with doctors or people in university studying a lot. I have a lot of respect for the people who do what you say, experiment, to help life, but for us to find solutions, only I am a football coach, far away from the people who work in science or at university. I have full respect for them.
The manager will have to make at least one change to his starting eleven after it was confirmed that Tanguy Ndombele will miss the match with a slight thigh strain.
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