Five things to look for as Tottenham Hotspur hosts Liverpool in the EPL

Besides who actually is in the squad and on the pitch, there are some other keys in the match that will have a major impact on the outcome.

Just how fit are the returning Tottenham players

It was one thing where earlier in the season Heung-min Son tested positive for Covid using a lateral flow test and then have it confirmed as a false positive with a PCR test. However, it is quite another thing for what Spurs and the players went through over the last two weeks when there were real, confirmed cases of Covid.

These were not all your asymptomatic cases either as several of the players were truly ill. While all the players who are participating have clearly recovered enough to pass Covid protocols, being available and being fit are two different things.

Tottenham was just starting to get into the kind of shape that Conte’s system demands when things were ground to a halt at N17. How long the returning players can go and just how much stamina may have been lost could be deciding factors in the game. Liverpool plays a high-intensity brand of football, which may be difficult for Spurs to match if the fitness is not there after the long layoff between games.

Who scores the first goal, Spurs or Reds?

One of our three keys for Tottenham to win is scoring the first goal. In 11 of Spurs’ 14 matches this season, the team scoring first has won. Tottenham did comeback twice, beating both Leeds and Newcastle after falling behind by a goal, and no one scored in the game against Everton.

We know that Liverpool can score a lot of goals and Tottenham can find the net on their day but in a match-up like this one, the team that strikes first has the upper hand. A 2016 study across five major European leagues showed that the team scoring first won more than 76% of the time if the visitor and almost 85% of the time if the home team scored first.

Statistics do not win games, of course, goals do, and scoring the first one matters. In each of their last two matches, Tottenham scored first and did so early and went on for shutout wins. Scoring first does not guarantee anything for anyone but it sure helps on the path to victory.

Can Harry Kane finally get going for Tottenham?

There used to be the old Harry Kane does not score in August bit for a few seasons early in his career. However, it has been a long, long, time since Kane has had the kind of Premier League scoring drought he has been in all season.

The weird part about Kane’s struggles is they are really on in the Premier League. He has seven from seven games in non-league matches for Spurs this season. With England, Kane has scored 10 times in six matches since September, including back-to-back hattricks in November.

But in Premier League play Kane has just 1 goal in almost 1,100 minutes. It really is inexplicable.

What we do know, however, is that Kane needs to get going if Tottenham is going to win and there is no better time to get a win than Sunday against Liverpool, a team Kane has beaten only once in 13 games. For Kane to make that two from 14, he needs to lead the line and find the net, preferably with the first goal of the game.