Key events
If you do this quiz your life will be better (for about 120 seconds)
I got 13/15. Whether this makes me special or a disgrace to the Guardian, well that’s not for me to say.
Ange Postecoglou on Son Heung-min
We are a team that is very disrupted, that is not playing with a fluency that it can play with. We’re asking players to play in positions that they are totally unfamiliar with. But when we’re at our best, I still think you’ll see Sonny’s return – in terms of his ability to score goals and be really effective for us. He’s going through a tough trot but we’re going through a tough trot. That goes hand in hand.
From the archive: classic Spurs v Liverpool matches
So, then, the Titanic. That went down a month after Tom Mason and Ernie Newman had given Tottenham a 2-1 victory at Anfield on 16 March 1912. Who’d have thought it would take the Lilywhites another 73 years to record their next win at Liverpool? And that – this is eerie – they would record it on exactly the same day of the year?
Garth Crooks was the hero for Peter Shreeves’s side, who had designs on the championship. Reigning champions Liverpool had been playing erratically all season, with Kevin MacDonald – a good player, just not a great one – no replacement for the departed Graeme Souness.
This result – Crooks scoring the winner with 19 minutes to go, following up a Micky Hazard shot which had been spilled by Bruce Grobbelaar – was celebrated wildly by Spurs. Partly because of the lifting of the historical millstone the players were allowed to keep their shirts as souvenirs, at a time when such practices were rarer, but mainly because it looked like being the symbolic catalyst to win the title.
“The name of the new Spurs goalie is strongly reminiscent of the late German acting firebrand Klaus Kinski,” notes Sandr- Peter Oh. “Come to think of it, managing Spurs must feel a little like trying to drag a ship over a mountain while listening to opera.”
In other news, Spurs have reportedly agreed a deal for MK Dons’ teenage defender Simon Syphus.
Team news: Kinsky makes Spurs debut
As expected, both managers have picked very strong sides. Spurs new goalkeeper, 21-year-old Antonin Kinsky, makes his debut. Son Heung-min, Rodrigo Bentancur and Yves Bissouma return to the side in place of Pape Mate Sarr, who is suspended, Timo Werner and Brennan Johnson.
Liverpool also make four changes from the weekend, three of them in defence. Conor Bradley, Jarell Quansah and Kostas Tsimikas come in for Trent Alexander-Arnold, Ibrahima Konate and Andy Robertson. The other change is in attack: Diogo Jota in, Luis Diaz out.
Tottenham Hotspur (4-3-3) Kinsky; Pedro Porro, Dragusin, Gray, Spence; Bergvall, Bentancur, Bissouma; Kulusevski, Solanke, Son.
Substitutes: Austin, Dorrington, Johnson, Lankshear, Moore, Olusesi, Reguilon, Werner, Yang Min-hyuk.
Liverpool (4-3-3) Alisson; Bradley, Quansah, Van Dijk, Tsimikas; Jones, Gravenberch, Mac Allister; Salah, Jota, Gakpo.
Substitutes: Kelleher, Endo, Konate, Diaz, Nunez, Chiesa, Elliott, Robertson, Alexander-Arnold.
Referee Stuart Attwell.
Preamble
Sequels, bloody hell. For every Godfather Part II there are usually a dozen Speed 2: Cruise Controls. It’s the same in football, where it’s rare for two teams to follow one thriller with another. But there are occasional exceptions, as anyone who followed Liverpool or Newcastle in the mid-1990s will tell you, and tonight has the potential to be another.
It’s barely a fortnight since Liverpool undressed Spurs 6-3 in the Premier League, and while we shouldn’t necessarily expect a repeat scoreline, the nature of both teams is such that it’s hard to envisage a clunker.
The stakes are high for both clubs and especially for the Spurs manager Ange Postecoglou. He usually wins trophies in his second season but, if tonight goes wrong, his only souvenir from the 2024-25 season might be a P45.
Let’s hope not. Big Ange and Spurs make English football a far more interesting, fun place. We can’t, or at least we shouldn’t, discuss their desperate recent form without acknowledging a pretty brutal injury list. Tonight they are also without the suspended pair of Pape Sarr and James Maddison, but the new signing Anthony Kinsky could start in goal.
Liverpool had an unexpectedly difficult afternoon against Manchester United on Sunday, a reminder that football will always be a funny old game, but they’ve only failed to win twice away from home all season and Arne Slot has named a very strong squad for tonight’s first leg.
In short, if this game ends goalless, I’ll watch Speed 2: Cruise Control every night for a year.
Kick off 8pm.
