Tottenham welcome Chelsea to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium

For the first time ever Jose Mourinho will face off against former Chelsea club captain Frank Lampard as Spurs host the former Midfielders’ Blues’ side.

Last time Chelsea faced their bitter London rivals it ended in a 2-0 win for the South West London side as Pedro opened the scoring before they got a helping hand from former Tottenham defender Kieran Trippier as he put the ball in his own net to make it two.

Since the arrival of their Portuguese boss Spurs have only lost twice in seven games with those being a 2-1 loss to Manchester United and a 3-1 loss to German giants Bayern Munich. Wins include a 5-0 thrashing of Burnley and most recently beating Wolves 2-1.

For Chelsea they have endured a terrible run with one win in their last four Premier League matches, losing 1-0 to Bournemouth and West Ham while also failing losing 3-1 to Everton. A 2-1 win over Aston Villa and a result matching that in Europe have been the only wins recently for Lampard’s men.

This is the first time that Mourinho will face Lampard in the dug-out as the 56-year old will meet the man he once dubbed “best player in the world” – it will be interesting to see whether the former star can get one over his former boss.

Team News:

Tanguy Ndombele has an outside chance of making the matchday squad for Mourinho’s men after returning to training, the same goes for back-up keeper Michel Vorm; However, Hugo Lloris, Ben Davies and Erik Lamela are all ruled out of this London derby.

Chelsea will be without two of their stars with Ruben Loftus-Cheek (Calf) and Marco Van Ginkel (Knee) both being out for unspecified periods.

There is good news for the Bridge faithful as Fikayo Tomori, Olivier Giroud and Ross Barkley are all fit ahead of this crunch match.

Spurs boss Mourinho expressed his commitment to his new side:

“I am 100 per cent Tottenham, I’ve always been 100 per cent my club throughout my career.

“There’s no space at all for my previous clubs. I gave everything to all of them, I kept nothing back and I gave everything to them.”

Lampard speaks about whether this is the toughest part of his managing career:

“I had this last year. Every manager has it to a degree. Maybe not Jurgen Klopp for a long time. It’s the nature of what we’re in.

There have been some real positives, so don’t get caught up in the negatives of a few results. We’re qualified for the next stage of the Champions league, we’re fourth which not a lot people said we would be by Christmas. We know we can do better, but we need to be confident and keep moving forward.”

“We’ve worked on the training ground more than spoken too much. It’s been a busy week, commitments through the week, but we’ve focused on training and will have meetings before the game.”

Head to Head

Tottenham wins – 54

Draws – 40

Chelsea wins– 70

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