Can struggling Tottenham complete the double over title-chasing Man City?

Tottenham Hotspur host Manchester City in the Premier League at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday evening.

Spurs defeated Eintracht Frankfurt 2-0 in the Champions League on Wednesday to secure their spot in the last 16 of the competition.

However, Thomas Frank’s side were held to a 2-2 stalemate at relegation-threatened Burnley last time out in the Premier League.

City also recorded a 2-0 victory in the Champions League, seeing off Galatasaray at the Etihad Stadium and also securing their spot in the last 16 of the competition.

The Citizens downed rock-bottom Wolverhampton Wanderers 2-0 in their last Premier League outing.

Match preview

Tottenham Hotspur have completed the Premier League double over Manchester City nine times so far, more than they have over any other opponent. Meanwhile, only Chelsea (10) have done so more against the Citizens.

Man City have won their last two away league games against Spurs, last winning three in a row between February 1973 and August 1974.

Spurs are winless in five Premier League matches (D3 L2), their fourth run of 5+ winless games in the last two seasons. They only had four runs of five or more winless games across their previous 12 seasons combined, from 2012/13 to 2023/24.

In the last two seasons, the only ever-present sides to pick up fewer Premier League points than Tottenham (66) are Wolves (50) and West Ham (63), with Spurs’ 31 defeats second only to Wolves (37) in that time. Another defeat would mean Spurs have lost 10+ games for eight consecutive seasons since 2018/19 – in their eight seasons beforehand (2010/11–2017/18) this only happened twice.

Man City’s Pep Guardiola has lost more league games against Spurs than any other opponent in his managerial career (8).

Thomas Frank has won just four of his last 22 home Premier League matches, with an identical record (W2 D3 L6) across his last 11 games with Brentford as in his first 11 with Spurs (W4 D6 L12 overall).

Omar Marmoush netted his first Premier League goal of the season in City’s 2-0 win over Wolves, but all eight of his goals in the competition have been scored at home – he’s failed to score with all 20 of his attempts in 12 games away from home.

Man City’s Antoine Semenyo has scored five goals in his last eight Premier League appearances, the joint most of any player in that timeframe (15 December onwards).

Team news

Tottenham Hotspur

The host will be hoping that Micky Van de Ven will return from the minor issue that kept him out of action against Frankfurt on Wednesday.

Dejan Kulusevski, Mohammed Kudus, James Maddison, Ben Davies, Pedro Porro, Richarlison, Rodrigo Bentancur and Lucas Bergvall are all sidelined with injuries.

Manchester City

Jeremy Doku was forced off with a calf injury in the Galatasaray win, and he’ll be unavailable.

He joins John Stones, Mateo Kovacic, Ruben Dias, Josko Gvardiol and Savinho in the visitors’ infirmary.

Predicted line-ups

Tottenham Hotspur: Guglielmo Vicario, Djed Spence, Cristian Romero, Micky van de Ven, Destiny Udogie, João Palhinha, Archie Grey, Conor Gallagher, Xavi Simons, Wilson Odobert, Dominic Solanke.

Manchester City: Gianluigi Donnarumma, Matheus Nunes, Abdukodir Khusanov, Marc Guéhi, Nico O’Reilly, Nico González, Tijjani Reijnders, Bernardo Silva, Rayan Cherki, Antoine Semenyo, and Erling Haaland.