Next Sunday, 24th of August 2014, Mauricio Pochettino’s “new” Tottenham and QPR will measure forces at White Hart Lane for the second round of the English Premier League.

The Argentinean manager enjoyed a positive start with Spurs last weekend since his side defeated West Ham at Boleyn Ground on what turned out to be a fairly complicated match for them. Tottenham were forced to play with only ten men from the 30th minute of the first half, when Kyle Naughton was shown the red card. Pochettino adapted his formation to a 4-4-1 style and managed to withstand the Hammers’ pressure (who were, in fact, the better team for the greater part of the match) and ended up by winning the match thanks to a late goal from the newcomer Eric Dier.

After his fantastic work with Southampton, Pochettino will now face a fairly more complicated task at the helm of the Spurs, a team that failed miserably last season after spending a considerably large amount of money. The Argentinean manager, who is seen by pundits as a Marcelo Bielsa’s disciple, has the task of “installing” an attractive new system based on quality passing play in the team, although, in order to achieve such thing, he still has plenty of work ahead of him.

For the match against QPR, Pochettino, is still not yet certain if he will be able to count on the contribution of Vlad Chiriches, Kyle Walker and the team’s captain Michael Dawson, all of them sidelined due to injury.

As for QPR, after the disappointing season opener against Hull, the London team will need to make some improvements if they want to snatch something positive from their visit to White Hart Lane. After gaining promotion last term, Harry Redknapp’s QPR failed to win their first home match of the season and, although they controlled the first-half, they did struggle to react to Chester’s goal after the break. Despite the defeat, QPR’s boss was happy with his team’s overall performance as he believes things will improve from now on if they keep focused on their work.

The last time both sides went head-to-head at White Hart Lane was back in 2012 and the Spurs won the match by 2-1, thanks to one goal from Defoe and an own goal from Faurlin. The home side are favourites for the next Sunday’s match, although it is hard to predict the outcome at these usually intense derbies.

Tottenham

Stats: W-5 L-0 D-0

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QPR

Stats: W-2 L-2 D-1

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Possible Line-ups

Tottenham (4-4-1-1) - Lloris - Walker - Kaboul - Dier - Rose - Capoue - Bentaleb - Lennon - Eriksen - Lamella - Adebayor

QPR (5-3-2) - Green - Caulker - Ferdinand - Dunne - Simpson - Traoré - Barton - Faurlin - Mutch - Austin - Remy

Prediction

Tottenham 2 QPR 0