Danny Rose has said the club are relishing the challenge of ending another unbeaten run against Manchester City on Saturday according to an article on ESPN.
It says while we battled to a hard-fought 2-0 home win over Brighton on Wednesday, City thrashed Swansea 4-0 to record a 15th-consecutive win in the Premier League — a new top-flight record, surpassing Arsenal’s 14-game run between February and August 2002.
It adds how City also broke Spurs’ own record for the best start to a top-flight campaign, which they had held since 1960-61, when Bill Nicholson’s side recorded 15 wins and a draw before suffering defeat.
The article goes on to say how last season, We ended Chelsea’s attempt to make Premier League history, beating them 2-0 at White Hart Lane in January to a halt a 13-game winning streak, while we also ended Pep Guardiola’s 11-game unbeaten start in English football in October 2016.
However the article says that Rose concedes that City are “very frightening” but that he is confident that Spurs can upset the odds again at the Etihad Stadium.
“We’ve had a good week and it puts us into good form going into a very difficult game at the weekend,” Rose said after our third Wembley win in a week for Spurs against Brighton.
Rose added: “We’ll go there and relish it. They are in good form. At the minute, they do look very frightening — scoring goals and they kept a clean sheet [against Swansea] — but we’ve done all right there in the past couple of seasons and that should give us some confidence at the weekend.
“We were the first ones to beat City last season and we disrupted Chelsea’s unbeaten run”
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Ros added: “It’s a challenge we all look forward to. It’s a challenge the manager looks forward to. In these games, he knows he’s going to get 100 percent from everyone.”
The article adds that Rose rejected the suggestion that there is no pressure on Spurs to beat the league leaders, adding: “There is pressure on us from ourselves and the manager — he demands the best from us in every game so I wouldn’t like to think any of us think there’s no pressure.
He added:We know our standards and whenever we slip from those standards the manager lets us know. So I say there is pressure on us and we look forward to going there and being the first team to beat them this season, as we did last season.
Rose continued: “There’s going to be a lot of eyes watching us this weekend. We haven’t done so well away from home against the top teams this season so we hope to go there with some confidence and keep pushing on after three wins that we’ve had over the last week.”
The article goes on to describe how Pep Guardiola and Mauricio Pochettino have a rivalry dating back to their time as managers of city rivals Barcelona and Espanyol in La Liga, while they have clashed this season over Guardiola’s description of Tottenham as “the Harry Kane team.”
But Rose insisted: “There’s no extra motivation. We’ve set our standards over the last two to three years and we’ve a good record there over the last two seasons. It’s just three points at the end of the day.
He added: “We’re not going there thinking we need try harder because it’s Man City or we need to try harder because it’s Guardiola. It’s three points and we know we have to keep winning to push ourselves up the table and it’s one we’re looking forward to.
“We don’t go into games thinking this three points is bigger than another three points. It was an amazing night beating Real Madrid, it was amazing thrashing Liverpool. All games we demand 100 percent from each other. If we go there at the weekend and win it will be a massive achievement but it will be nothing short of what we expect of each other.”
It also describes how not for the first time, we laboured to break down a defensive team on Wednesday but Rose hopes City’s attacking approach will suit the visitors, who have won and drawn on their last two visits to Eastlands.
Rose said: “Tonight was just not a nice game. When teams come here, they get in shape and make it really difficult for us,” he said. “With the offensive players we’ve got, when teams come at us, it suits us better and we’ll be looking forward to watching our offensive players getting right up against City and causing them problems.”
Saturday’s game will be the first time Kyle Walker has faced his former club competitively since joining City for £50 million in the summer.
The article concludes how Rose will be directly up against his England teammate, with whom he spent nearly a decade at the club, and he said: “Of course, it will be nice to see him and play against him if I’m selected. He’s the enemy this weekend. There’ll be no pleasantries until after the game.
“There’s no envy. He fully deserved his move. Over the last two to three years he has been the best right-back in the league. His assists and performances prove that. He’s got what he deserves and I wish him the best of luck in every game that he plays, apart from when he plays against us.”
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