Good evening and welcome to our live blog coverage of the Premier League, where Tottenham host Chelsea in the Monday night football. Chelsea’s manager Mauricio Pochettino was a popular and effective manager here for many seasons, and it will be intriguing to see what reception he gets. That is a juicy sub-plot, no doubt, but for both of these sides, progress and points are what they both want to see.
Spurs, second on 26 points, are the only unbeaten side in the division and they will go top with a win. Chelsea’s start to the season has been disappointing indeed and, with just 12 points from 10 games, Pochettino will know that he better start winning games very soon, unless he wants to add “former Chelsea manager” to his CV along with “ex-Spurs boss”…
I’m confident of some good manly bearhug type stuff between the rival gaffers tonight. Ange Postecoglou says of Poch:
“From afar, great admiration. I think the impact he had at Southampton and at Spurs is unquestionable. He has taken on some pretty big challenges post-Spurs as well, which I’m all for. I like managers who take on big challenges, so great admiration and respect for his work.”
Poch meanwhile laughed off any suggestion that he might have conflicted emotions on his return.
“I want to win. I want to beat them. But when I play with my kids, I want to beat them, or my dad, or my brothers, or my friends – I try to kill them!
“I want to win because we are competitive, I am competitive. It’s not a special thing. I don’t want to go there and (people) think it’s a revenge. For what?
“For me, it’s going to be important because we need to win, Chelsea need to win because we need the points.”
Kick off tonight will be at 8pm and we will have the team news about 7pm. We’ll get stuck into the blog from 6.30pm when no doubt there will be Var controversies, vile chants, Mikel Arteta rants and much more besides to be analysed on Sky Sports by Telegraph columnist Jamie Carragher and company.