The Contest of Would-be Champions

Tottenham and Liverpool set to tussle in race for league honours

Iron sharpens iron in Saturday's early kick-off as the English Premier League returns with a mouth watering clash between title hopefuls Tottenham and Liverpool. After the last round of fixtures both sides come off contrasting results with Liverpool keeping their momentum going with a fourth straight win, albeit in a shaky second half performance, against Leicester.

Spurs had their winning run ended at the hands of this season's surprise package Watford. 

Despite this early season setback Spurs go into Saturday's fixture with confidence knowing they managed to take four points of this weekend's visitors last season. In fact in this very fixture last season, Spurs inflicted one of Liverpool's worst defeats of the league as they ran out 4-1 winners and haven't lost a home to Liverpool on the last three occasions.

More importantly, against the top six since taking temporary residence at Wembley, Spurs have only lost to Chelsea and Manchester City at home which says much about their big game mentality.

Liverpool on the other hand, despite being early season favourites didn't fair well against their top six rivals last season. The Reds won just two games against teams in the top six when they hammered a struggling Arsenal and produced an eye-catching performance to stun Manchester City. Unfortunately, those wins came at home as the Reds didn't fair so well away from Anfield collecting just a solitary point on their travels.

This begs a question about Liverpool in big matches as we know all clashes against the league's big sides are often what decides who wins the league and who doesn't. Essentially the clichéd saying to be the best you have to beat the best aptly applies.

While its still early in the season to measure the impact of this fixture for both sides, a win for either team will serve as a springboard to mount a credible challenge for the title and will also act as a psychological boost.

This will pretty much set the tone of the next few weeks of the season and in Liverpool's case they need the win more than Spurs considering the hectic run of fixtures coming up.