After almost three months of waiting it’s finally time to get back to business as the new English Premier League season gets underway. We’ve got a whole host of fascinating fixtures to get excited about on the opening weekend, but there’s arguably no game more dramatic than the impending clash between Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City.

Spurs are coming off the back of a poor campaign in which they didn’t really make much of a dent in the top four race, but with Jose Mourinho gone, the hope seems to be that Nuno Espirito Santo can dust this team off and reignite the flame that seems to have been missing in recent times.

Manchester City, meanwhile, are the reigning English champions, and with that comes a certain degree of pressure. It’s not like Pep Guardiola isn’t used to such a sensation but he’ll definitely recognise just how many threats there could be in the surge to try and win a second consecutive title at the Etihad.

It probably isn’t going to come as much of a surprise for folks to learn that City are the favourites to win this one with odds of 6/10 via William Hill. They definitely have a squad that feels more ‘well-rounded’ by comparison to Tottenham, and that’s something they often utilise pretty well at the elite level.

Nuno’s men are going to need to produce a performance of epic proportions to get the job done and this is represented pretty heavily in their odds, which currently stand at 4/1 with Betfair. Everyone knows about the attacking options they possess and even touching on a few of those could be huge for their chances in this game.

Perhaps the biggest debate of all, though, is the future of Harry Kane – a man who has been at the heart of both club’s story during the summer transfer window. He’s positioned as Tottenham’s main man, as he has been for years, whereas City are eager to make him their new star forward in the weeks to come.

He’s all the way out at 9/2 with Betfred to be the first goalscorer which makes sense, given that any number of Manchester City stars could easily find themselves on the scoresheet within the blink of an eye. Either way, regardless of where he ends up, this is an incredibly important time in the career of Harry Kane and nobody knows that better than him.

With regards to our official prediction, it’s hard to imagine anything other than a convincing Manchester City win here. We don’t think Nuno is the right man for the job in North London, we don’t think they’ve built up enough cohesion within their first team and we certainly don’t think they’re confident in getting a positive result here.

Yes, there’s a lot of pressure on the shoulders of Manchester City, but that isn’t likely to be enough to overcome their dominance in just about every single area of the pitch. They’ll be the ones leading the charge here and we believe they’ll win 3-1.