Tottenham v Manchester City Champions League

Manchester City has been drawn against Tottenham and will travel to London to face the first leg in early April and take on the second leg at home the week after. FreeTips.com looks at the reaction from City manager Pep Guardiola.

In the last three meetings between these two teams, City won every time, but interesting Pep does not believe that this is going to give his team the winning edge on this occasion. In fact, in an interesting revelation, he has stated that it will be hard to call and predicts it could go either way in a 50/50 set of two games. “We know each other quite well; we played many times over the last years. It’s 50/50; we try to get that before that game in the best condition possible. It happens, it’s the fixtures. For both, it is a pleasure to be in the quarter-final and the last eight teams in the Champions League.”

In the last eight of the competition this year there are four Premier League teams so draws against each other were quite likely. Looking for a positive spin, the manager said that it was easier for his team not to have to fly out to Spain or Catalonia with London being much closer. It is reminiscent of their games last year when they faced Liverpool at this stage, but Guardiola maintains that this is a much different situation. The role of the dice has meant that there will actually be three games against each other in the space of just 11 days as they also have a Premier League fixture together to get through. Again this is not a new experience for Pep as the same thing happened when he was managing Barcelona in the 2010/11 season and ended up with four matches against Real Madrid in the same time window. His belief is that the run of games does influence each other with the two Champions League games coming first and then the Premier League at the end.

Tottenham is no longer in a position to win the Premier League as this seems to be down to a two horse race between City and Liverpool. Although they are sitting in third, they are 13 points behind City and have Arsenal breathing down their necks. Arsenal has Manchester United looking to push back up to fourth so competition is fierce but a top four looks on the cards for Spurs. However, they are indeed contenders for the semi-finals of the Champions League so it would make sense to concentrate on these games as being more important at this stage than a Premier League game that technically the blues should win. It will undoubtedly be a nail-biting set of games for the fans of both teams.