Mario Balotelli and Micah Richards are available for Manchester City after missing Monday's trip to Wigan through injury.

But they are without the suspended Vincent Kompany, while Yaya and Kolo Toure are on international duty.

Emmanuel Adebayor is ineligible for Spurs under the terms of his loan move from City, meaning Jermain Defoe is likely to start.

Ledley King, sidelined for the last four weeks, remains a major doubt.

I start to go all misty-eyed thinking about this fixture! From Spurs' 3-2 win in the 1981 FA Cup final replay, to City winning 5-1 at White Hart Lane at the start of this season - these two have played out many memorable games in my lifetime.

I'm obviously hoping that this time will be something special too, but can already sense a tension in the air around the Etihad Stadium. Roberto Mancini's almost carefree nature of the season's early weeks has given way to a sterner, card-waving persona - symptomatic of the pressure that leading the way for so long brings.

Last Monday's 1-0 win at Wigan will have brought just as much pleasure to the Italian as the win at Spurs or even the 6-1 at Old Trafford in October, because it got City back on track after a mini-wobble in the cups this month. I even heard it described as a 'Mourinho result' - and he won Premier League titles.

Harry Redknapp's never made any great play of his team's title credentials, merely answering in "why not?" fashion when the question has been posed. Currently on a run of seven league games unbeaten, if Spurs get their seventh win in 11 visits to City's 21st century home then the gap between the teams will be just two points. "Why not?" indeed.

The last two instances of this fixture have effectively been end-of-season eliminators for the final available Champions League place. They each finished 1-0, both decided by Peter Crouch goals - one in the right net, one in his own.

This time both clubs have designs on entering next season's Champions League as genuine champions.

If