United will face a broken Spurs side, or one all fired up

One of the handicaps for Manchester United in their bid to retain the English Premier League title is they still have to visit their two biggest rivals, whereas leaders Manchester City have already been to United and Tottenham and taken a maximum six points.

The first of those two remaining ultra-tough away games for United is tomorrow at Tottenham and again the pressure is on the title holders to keep pace with City, who are two points ahead and have an easy home game against Bolton.

Depending on your point of view, United will face a Tottenham side that was softened up by Arsenal last weekend or will be fired up to bounce back from that shocking 5-2 defeat. The turnaround at Arsenal is the latest piece of form to show Tottenham are coming up short in the big games.

Harry Redknapp's side have taken eight points from their eight matches against the other members of the big six - in stark contrast to the 17 points earned by United in the same number of matches and the 16 taken by City from seven games. Therein lies the difference between Tottenham and the top two, who will almost certainly be left to fight out the championship.

Tottenham's overall form is impressive, yet their title challenge has stalled in the past two months with defeats at City and Arsenal and draws at Chelsea and Liverpool. They have won just two out of eight against the big six, both at home, and the 4-0 victory over Liverpool was heavily influenced by two sending-offs for the visitors.

United, by contrast, have won five of their eight big-six clashes and suffered only one defeat - the 6-1 at home to City. The sole away win from three matches was the 2-1 at Arsenal six weeks ago and there is encouragement for Spurs in the fact that United were fortunate to escape with draws at Liverpool and Chelsea.