Tottenham welcome Manchester City to north London on Sunday, and Thomas Frank has delivered the latest update on Micky van de Ven\u2019s fitness ahead of the Premier League showdown.<\/p>\n
The Dutch centre-back sat out Wednesday\u2019s Champions League victory over Frankfurt with what Frank described as a \u201cminor\u201d injury. His absence did not hinder Spurs, who secured a 2\u20130 win in Germany to book their place in the round of 16.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Frank confirmed that Van de Ven remains a doubt for the visit of Pep Guardiola\u2019s side, describing the defender\u2019s availability as \u201ctouch and go\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cMicky is a minor one, it will be touch and go for Sunday,\u201d Frank said. \u201cWe\u2019re hoping \u2014 he was on the pitch yesterday and today \u2014 so we\u2019re hopeful, but it\u2019s touch and go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cristian Romero and Kevin Danso partnered at centre-back against Frankfurt and could be called upon again if Van de Ven is not deemed fit in time. However, Spurs will definitely be without Pedro Porro, Richarlison, Lucas Bergvall, Ben Davies, Mohammed Kudus, Dejan Kulusevski, Rodrigo Bentancur and James Maddison.<\/p>\n
Tottenham head into the weekend sitting 14th in the Premier League, with Frank under pressure to deliver a much-needed home victory. Manchester City, meanwhile, are chasing Arsenal at the top of the table, with the Gunners potentially moving seven points clear before kick-off following their Saturday fixture against Leeds United.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on Spurs\u2019 campaign, Frank acknowledged the frustrations of the season but stressed the importance of perspective and persistence.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very aware that you always hope for more,\u201d he said. \u201cSmall things in football can shift momentum, and sometimes they don\u2019t go your way. This is a transitional season where we still need to be ambitious and competitive in every competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe we should be higher in the table, but it\u2019s also fair to say that fine margins have cost us points. With a bit more luck, we could easily have six more points and be having a very different conversation. Unfortunately, that hasn\u2019t happened, so we need to keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tottenham welcome Manchester City to north London on Sunday, and Thomas Frank has delivered the latest update on Micky van de Ven\u2019s fitness ahead of the Premier League showdown. The Dutch centre-back sat out Wednesday\u2019s Champions League victory over Frankfurt with what Frank described as a \u201cminor\u201d injury. His absence did not hinder Spurs, who …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":58205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_1788.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58206,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58204\/revisions\/58206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/58205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}