By ’Tayo Amosu
October 9, 2014
Despite the home and away humiliation of Tottenham Hotspurs by Manchester City last season, Tottenham Hotspurs defender, Younes Kaboul has come out to express the North London club’s mental and physical readiness for this season’s English Premier League clash against the title holders, Manchester City.
Last season, under the management of Andre Villas-Boas, Tottenham Hotspurs was mauled 6-0 by Manchester City at the Etihad and in the return fixture at White Hart Lane, this time under Tim Sherwood, the North London club was embarrassed yet again in front of their supporters and home crowd, they were embarrassed by losing 5-1 against Manuel Pellegrini’s Manchester City side.
But this time, Kaboul said: ‘‘What happened last season was last season. In football, the most important thing is the present and we look at the future. We look forward to this game. Football is football, you never know what can happen, but mentally and physically, we have to be ready for this game.’’
The Frenchman went further by expressing how he thinks they should approach the game against Manchester City after the international break.
He said: ‘‘We need to produce a similar performance to the one against Arsenal. I know each game is different, but we need to learn from the Arsenal game because it is a big team, we are going to play a massive team again. We need to be similar but even better. Simply they are more of a threat in front (than Arsenal). They’ve got a lot of players attacking and they are ready for the fight. They are champions of England so we need to produce a big performance there.’’
Tottenham Hotspurs this season is led by Mauricio Pochettino and they seem a better squad than last season when they were annihilated home and away by Manchester City.
This season, after 7 games, the Spurs team are sitting on the 6th spot on the English Premier League table beating Southampton 1-0 and then securing a 1-1 draw against Arsenal in their last two matches.
Followers of the English Premier League no doubt are poised for a very interesting match when the international break ends this month with a fixture like the one Kaboul is talking about against Manchester City.
City are currently sitting on the 2nd position with just 5 points against League leaders Chelsea, while Tottenham occupy the 6th position with 11 points from 7 games.
However, Mauricio Pochettino may just deploy a different approach to the Manchester City game later this month.
Kaboul’s expression of confidence cannot be dissociated with the string of performances displayed by the Spurs team so far this season.
The draw against Arsenal surely is a morale booster for the North London club and it is likely to spur them into performing wonderfully well against the Manuel Pellegrini side.
With players in the squad like Emmanuel Adebayor, who would face his former club, Etienne Capoue, Danny Rose, Jan Vertonghen, Chadli and Eriksen, Spurs should be able to mount a strong challenge against the Premier League title defenders.
Tottenham Hotspurs travel to Manchester to play City at the Etihad stadium on the 18th October, 2014 in a lunch time match fixture and many Spurs and City fans look forward to this big game with so much anticipation of a good showing by their teams.
