Next Sunday, 9th of November 2014, a motivated Tottenham will entertain a fairly inconsistent Stoke City at White Hart Lane for round 11 of the English Premier League, on a match that the Spurs surely want to win in order to extend their recent quality moment and in order to close the gap to the teams that are currently on the first five places of the EPL table.

After losing to Newcastle at home two weeks ago, Spurs’ boss, Mauricio Pochettino, seems to have rallied his troops and subsequently the team started to win again. There are already three wins in a row, first at home against Brighton for the Capital One Cup, then against Aston Villa for the EPL, and last Thursday at Greece over Asteras Tripolis for the UEFA Europa League. Last weekend’s clash against Aston Villa was a fairly difficult one, especially because the Villans scored early in the match and the Spurs only managed to clinch their win on the last ten minutes of the match. The U21 English international Harry Kane was the hero of the day, as he netted in Spurs’ second goal in the dying moments of the match thus helping his team return to wins at EPL after two consecutive defeats against Newcastle and Manchester City.

Pochettino has not been having an easy life at White Hart Lane and he has already faced some criticism because of some less impressive performances from his team. The expectations of Tottenham’s supporters were certainly high after the arrival of the Argentinean manager, who did a remarkable job with Southampton, but they cannot forget what the team went through last season, especially after the departure of André Villas-Boas.

It takes a lot of time to implement your own ideas into a team and it is blatantly obvious that Pochettino needs more than four or five months to pass all his knowledge to the players and it would certainly be a good thing if he was allowed to bring in some of the players he wants, instead of having to work with other people’s choices.

For the clash against Stoke, the Argentinean manager is not yet certain if he will be able to rely on the contribution of some important players, such as Bentaleb, Lennon, Walker and Dier, all currently sidelined due to injury.

As for Stoke, the new season has been marked by blatant inconsistency. The Potters are not going through a very positive moment, as they suffered three defeats on their last five matches. The main problem of Mark Hughes’ team is probably at the defence, as the Potters have already conceded 12 goals in ten matches so far and scored only 10. Last weekend, Stoke did good as they forced the surprising West Ham to a 2-2 draw at Britannia Stadium and they might take some positive notes from that match.

Although their home performances this season are far from brilliant, Spurs are favourite to win next Sunday’s clash.

Tottenham

Stats: W-4 L-1 D-0

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Stoke City

Stats: W-1 L-3 D-1

Recent Form - DLLWL

Possible Line-ups

Tottenham (4-4-1-1) - Lloris - Vertonghen - Kaboul - Naughton - Rose - Capoue - Mason - Chadli - Eriksen - Lamella - Soldado

Stoke City  (4-2-3-1) – Begovic - Cameron - Shawcross - Wilson - Pieters - Sidwell - N’Zonzi - Krkic - Moses - Walters - Diouf

Prediction

Tottenham 2 Stoke City 0