Tottenham Fan View: Man City v Spurs preview

From the outside, deploying a two-man central midfield of Yaya Touré and Pablo Zabaleta is either the actions of coach utterly bored with conventional tactics— or a cry for help.

While that might be a lot of fun for us neutrals, it’s unlikely to harvest much-enduring success for anyone connected. It certainly bore no rewards for Pep Guardiola at Goodison last Sunday.

Look, you can see the logic. Zabaleta has many of the required qualities to function as an all-action midfielder. As an industrious, marauding fullback for most of his career, he’s used to covering vast expanses of ground and getting into the thick of the action— the Argentine has no shortage of technical quality, either.

But he looked miles short of his best against Everton. There are famously certain objects that one should never bother trying to polish: one of those things, as much as Guardiola tries, is Pablo Zabaleta’s shiny dome, in the hope that he might turn into Philipp Lahm.

Not that he got much help from Touré. While Tom Davies and Ross Barkley’s heat maps looked as if they’d been popped in a microwave on full power for two minutes; a melted blob of indecipherable, thrilling data— the Ivorian megastar trotted around with the enthusiasm of someone leaf-blowing their driveway.

You can’t help but wonder, then, what this same partnership will make of Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham, widely regarded as the hardest working side in show business.

With options still scarce, (Fernandinho: suspended, obviously. Gundogan: injured) Guardiola will be forced into sticking with the same muddled combination.

How will Yaya hope to keep track of Dele Alli, in the form of his life, full of pesky running and energy? Will the big double-Champions League winner really be that arsed about marking Cristian Eriksen, while he flits between City’s lines looking for an opening? It’s hard to imagine.

As good as the outlook might be for Tottenham; as lop-sided as the midfield battle might appear, fans will tell you it’s rarely as straightforward.

Touré could spend the evening barely lifting a finger. He could get nowhere near Tottenham’s buzzing sprites for 85 minutes and still slap one in the top corner in the 86th. There’s enough gold dust left in those boots to inflict that kind of hard-luck narrative on Spurs. A vintage tragicomic scenario that might make fans quite nostalgic.

Pochettino will also be aware that City now also have a wildcard to play; in the shape of new recruit Gabriel Jesus, who finally made things official with the Manchester club on Thursday. With all the necessary paperwork filed in time, the Brazilian will be available. With things not exactly clicking for Guardiola in recent League outings, he might even be tempted to throw in the rogue element from the off, just to see what happens. It could be a fascinating encounter.