By Gary Fulcher, Daniel Rhodes and Mihail Vladimirov.

The end of the calendar year is fast approaching and with it comes what will surely be our biggest test so far this season, with five league fixtures in 18 days, including tough matches at Tottenham, Manchester City and Chelsea, with home games against Cardiff and Hull added to the mix. First up is a trip to White Hart Lane on Sunday afternoon with a 4pm kick off (UK time).

Spurs sit four places beneath us in 6th but just three points separate the two sides prior to this fixture and it’s their away form that has kept them in the mix so far with five wins from eight on their travels compared to just the three picked up at White Hart Lane (1-0 against  Swansea, 2-0 against Norwich and 1-0 against Hull) from seven matches. They’ve dropped points at home against Chelsea (1-1) and Manchester Utd (2-2) and suffered defeats to West Ham (0-3) and Newcastle (0-1).

Whereas Tottenham are strong on their travels but poor at home, the opposite is true for Liverpool this season. Our 4-1 victory over West Ham on Saturday was our seventh win at Anfield from eight matches (22 goals scored, five conceded), while away from home we’ve won two (1-0 against Aston Villa and 3-1 against Sunderland), drawn three (2-2 with Swansea, 2-2 with Newcastle and 3-3 with Everton) and lost two (0-2 to Arsenal and 1-3 to Hull).

The corresponding fixture last season saw us suffer a 1-2 defeat with goals from Lennon and Bale putting Spurs 2-0 up after 16 minutes before a Gareth Bale own goal with 18 minutes left gave us some hope of salvaging something but to no avail. That defeat was our fifth consecutive loss to Spurs at White Hart Lane in the Premier League, indeed our last victory in this fixture came on the final day of the 2007/08 season where we secured a 2-0 victory courtesy of goals from Voronin and Torres.

Our record victory in this fixture is 4-0 which came during the 1975/76 campaign, while Spurs’ biggest victory is 7-2 from the 1962/63 season.

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