Premier League Preview: Time for Tottenham to Reaffirm Title Credentials

The pose was familiar. The behaviour less so. Squatting on the Anfield touchline as if weighing up the best way to play a pivotal putt, Tottenham Hotspur Mauricio Pochettino was a model of studied concentration.

Moments later the shrill of the referee’s whistle signalled the end of the most captivating of contests. It was as though a child had been forcibly woken from a blissful state of reverie. An iron fist in a velvet glove beat the turf as the Argentinian made his feelings crystal clear.

A 1-1 draw at Liverpool is no longer enough for Tottenham Hotspur. The draw represented two points dropped rather than one gained in a tumultuous Premier League title race. A (credible) draw when a win is needed is Spurs to a tee, upholding a time-honoured club tradition of failure with a flourish.

There are few more beautiful losers than Tottenham. Only Spurs could finish fourth as they did in 2012 and not play in the UEFA Champions League the following season. They got the girl, but before the credits had rolled, she had run off with European champions Chelsea.

At a question-and-answer session promoting his most recent autobiography, The Second Half, Roy Keane told a typically pithy story that encapsulated the cultural shift Pochettino has had to engineer since arriving at White Hart Lane in 2014.

Recounting a pre-match team talk Sir Alex Ferguson gave to his Manchester United players before a league game with Tottenham, Keane cut to the quick of why Spurs last won the title in 1960/61, per James Riach of the Guardian.

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I thought I knew what the group might need, that we didn’t need a big team talk.

It was Tottenham at home. I thought "please don’t go on about Tottenham, we all know what Tottenham is about, they are nice and tidy but we’ll f---ing do them."

He came in and said: "Lads, it's Tottenham." And that was it. Brilliant.

"

Tottenham Hotspur vs. Manchester United, Sunday at 4 p.m. BST

Sunday's game with Manchester United provides an ideal opportunity for Tottenham to reaffirm their title credentials regardless of how Leicester City fare at Sunderland earlier in the day.

Spurs have dropped points in three of their last five league games, all against sides with interests of their own at the business end of the table. From March 2 to April 2, they failed to beat Liverpool, Arsenal and West Ham United and endured a UEFA Europa League drubbing to Borussia Dortmund. They need a big result.

From the middle of December to beginning of March, they dropped five league points. In the five matches that have followed, seven points have been lost.

Keane has been spotted rolling his eyes and barking "it’s Tottenham" at terrified shoppers all season.

If there is one thing Pochettino hates, it'd be a moniker being affixed to his side. It's little wonder. Last season, Tottenham conceded as many Premier League goals as Burnley (53) and two more than Hull City. Both were relegated. This term, they have the stingiest defence in the division, having been breached just 25 times.

He’s done some remarkable work in a relatively short space of time, especially when taking into account Jan Vertonghen has been out injured since the end of January. The use of Eric Dier just in front of his two centre-halves has been an absolute masterstroke, with his discipline and ability to drop to form a back three allowing Spurs' full-backs to bomb on and play as auxiliary wingers at times. Vertongen, along with Erik Lamela, could be back in contention Sunday.

Pochettino has also made lean the fat squad he inherited, after the club used the money raised from the sale of Gareth Bale in 2013 to fund the most speculative of spending sprees.

Garth Crooks said at the time, per Darren Lewis of the Daily Mirror, Spurs had "sold Elvis and bought the Beatles" when Nacer Chadli, Etienne Capoue, Vlad Chiriches, Christian Eriksen, Lamela, Paulinho and Roberto Soldado (the Fab Seven—eh, Garth?) entered stage right as the Welshman exited stage left. 

Presumably, he meant the Bootleg Beatles. It came as little surprise when technical director/spender-in-chief Nick Leeson Franco Baldini and Tottenham parted ways at the start of the season.

In that quiet but confident way of his, all done while wearing the smile of a man who has a misfiring Spanish striker in the trunk of his car, Pochettino has kept the cream and dispensed with the crud from that lot without missing a beat. 

The work he has done with Tottenham’s young English players has meant the usually staid Roy Hodgson can't pass him without giving a bear hug and juicy smacker. How England team-mates Harry Kane and Chris Smalling fare in opposition could go a long way toward deciding Sunday’s contest. Kane goes into the game as the Premier League Player of the Month for March. 

Equally intriguing, if both are selected, is how Dier and Michael Carrick compare in holding roles for their respective sides. If the latter can dictate the pace of the game from deep, Hodgson will have something to think about. For all Dier's good work in Berlin during the recent international break, the England manager retains a conservative streak. Carrick will be acutely aware this could be his best opportunity to book a place on the plane for this summer's UEFA European Championship in France.

Meanwhile, Tim Sherwood sits in a pub with Nigel Pearson trading stories of how it should be the pair of them duking it out at the Premier League summit as opposed to sharing a packet of Scampi Fries while waiting for the pool table to come free.

In truth, there was not much wrong with Spurs’ endeavours in the 1-1 draw at Liverpool. It’s just it left them trailing Leicester by seven points with six matches left to play because Claudio Ranieri’s side produced a conversely ugly-beautiful performance a day later against Southampton, to record a fourth successive 1-0 victory.

Alex Livesey/Getty Images

Manchester United travel to north London on the back of four wins in five matches, a run that has propelled them to within a point of neighbours Manchester City in fourth place. A win for Louis van Gaal’s men on Sunday would leave them just six points shy of their hosts with a game in hand. 

After a five-match winless run in the fixture, United make the trip south having won back-to-back matches against Spurs. Kyle Walker’s own goal separated the two teams at Old Trafford on the opening day of the season.

A lot has changed since then. Namely, Spurs' emergence as an unlikely but eminently credible title challenger while United toil perpetually between being inexplicably bad and quietly good on a week-to-week basis.

The surprise factor of Marcus Rashford, continued faith in fellow academy graduate Jesse Lingard, promotion of Tim Fosu-Mensah and all-round excellence of Anthony Martial has softened the stance of some United supporters toward Van Gaal. The Dutchman likely believes he was the inspiration for Frank Sinatra's "My Way," but it’s only since doing it United's way—blooding youngsters from within—that he has looked even half-likely of keeping his job beyond the summer.

Martial’s winning goal against Everton last time out was the 1,000th United have scored in the Premier League at Old Trafford. It took the Frenchman’s tally to 13 for the season.

Brian Kidd shares the record for goals scored by Manchester United teenagers in their first full season with Wayne Rooney. Both scored 17 in their respective debut campaigns. Martial, 20 now but 19 at the start of the season, has scored in five different competitions for United this term. Usurping Rooney as United’s top teenager would be a further milestone in the passing of the torch at Old Trafford.  

It is a measure of Pochettino’s powers of alchemy that steel and style are married harmoniously throughout a side that prior to his arrival could do little but shrug when accused of being all fur coat and no knickers. Go back a few more years, and Dimitar Berbatov would on occasion likely leave the field barely knowing the score, such was his preoccupation with wondering how he’d look in a little fur number.

Mousa Dembele has attracted a criminal lack of praise in comparison to the season’s great breakthrough act, Dele Alli, but in some ways he embodies what Pochettino wants from his side more than any other player: steely style.

He's an indulgent minder to his 19-year-old team-mate, ready to put a protective arm around him and whisper sage advice when the precociousness of youth threatens to tip the wrong side of the "healthy disrespect" he shows opponents, according to former Spurs captain Ledley King, speaking to the Daily Mail (via the Evening Standard). 

If Dembele is in the type of imperious form he showed against Liverpool, when the home side’s players bounced off him as if going shoulder-to-shoulder with a granite statue, Spurs could dominate United’s midfield.

There’s a beautiful understated manner to the Belgian’s play. Against Liverpool, while the other 21 players on the pitch threw themselves around the field as if deckhands trying to steady a ship in stormy weather, it was as though Dembele was sat in a deckchair engrossed in a good book.

He seems oblivious to the chaos around him, always an elegant presence, whether shifting the ball quickly or drifting past his man with a drop of a shoulder. He probably won't make the shortlist for the PFA Player of the Year, but he should be in the conversation.

Football managers are notoriously loath to dwell on what has happened in the past, but as any number of Henry VIII’s ex-wives would attest, those that fail to heed the lessons of history are asking for trouble. Pochettino has yet to see his Spurs side score in the three games he has overseen against United.

Tottenham haven’t beaten Manchester United in 14 games at White Hart Lane. The last time was on the final day of the 2000/01 season when a 3-1 victory saw Willem Korsten score two of three goals he managed in total for Spurs. To give a little context, Geri Halliwell was No. 1 at the time with "It’s Raining Men" and Anne Boleyn still had a head.

There has always been a slightly odd relationship between the two clubs, as if United are somehow a more knowing older brother to Tottenham's likeable but naive younger sibling. At times, it has felt as though playing for Spurs is almost an audition to make the move to Old Trafford.

Berbatov and Carrick both made the switch after impressing for Tottenham, while Luka Modric and Bale might also have taken the same journey had Real Madrid not come calling. What price United launching outlandish offers for either Kane or Alli, maybe both, over the summer? Pochettino is probably hardly shy of admirers in United’s boardroom, either. 

He'll have even more, albeit of the begrudging variety, if he masterminds a first Tottenham victory over Manchester United at White Hart Lane in 15 attempts. If he can’t, even more so than it is already, the Premier League title will be Leicester City’s to lose.

West Ham United vs. Arsenal, Saturday at 12.45 p.m. BST

Manchester City vs. West Bromwich Albion, Saturday at 5.30 p.m. BST 

Crystal Palace vs. Norwich City, Saturday at 3 p.m. BST

Sunderland vs. Leicester City, Sunday at 1.30 p.m. BST

Liverpool vs. Stoke City, Sunday at 4 p.m. BST