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Daniel Levy goes back to the future this weekend for a match with some very tasty sub-plots.

None more so than the battle between the experienced campaigner, sacked by the Spurs supremo at the end of last season and the Premier League new kid on the block slowly proving he is the real deal.

As things stand, Harry Redknapp is starting to make inroads in his fight to keep Queens Park Rangers in the Premier League.

That monumental win at Chelsea last week was the stuff of fantasy.

Were he to pull off a similar shock at home to Spurs on Saturday the three points would surely be among the sweetest he has ever savoured in his managerial career.

Yet Andre Villas Boas has Spurs perched above Chelsea in the Premier League, in the race for Champions League football.

And even though Rafa Benitez has the Blues resurgent once more they could yet drop more points at Stoke, who remain undefeated in 16 matches at the Britannia Stadium.

So the incentive is there for both bosses at Loftus Road on Saturday lunchtime.

Despite all he has done this season AVB will be well aware that there remain some who do still have their doubts about him.

Dropped points at home to West Brom, Norwich, Wigan and Stoke would give them an argument (victories in those games would have put Spurs just four points off leaders Manchester United in second).

Yet the portents do still look good for Tottenham under a Portuguese coach that some would argue is a striker and a quality midfielder away from having one of the best squads in the Premier League.

Villas-Boas is taking the Europa League as seriously with Spurs as he did with Porto and the double figure odds in some places for them winning the FA Cup look as decent an investment as any.

When we journalists asked, away to Panathinaikos, why he was fielding such strong sides in the Europa League, he insisted he was trying to get his men used to the kind of workload that big clubs and big players cope with.

It is also fascinating to see that Chelsea are now doing exactly what they had asked AVB to when he was boss at Stamford Bridge: dispensing with sentiment and easing - no, booting - out the old guard.

John Terry may well be posting Instagram messages about himself soon if the examples of Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole are anything to go by.

And, for all their fears about AVB leading them into the Europa rather than the Champions League, Chelsea will play in the less fashionable competition in the second half of this season anyway.

In fact, if Arsenal eventually do click into gear (they always finish the season strongly) the Blues could yet be deprived of top tier European football next season as well.

So Levy is entitled to pour himself a large one ahead of this weekend's clash at Loftus Road.

The Spurs chief has had his critics but he has made it work with the man he pinched on a free transfer. A man on whom Chelsea gambled £14million to trigger that buyout clause and lost because they panicked.

Nothing is decided in January and there is obviously a long way to go.

But Spurs are nicely placed turning for home and, with Emmanuel Adebayor now off to the Africa Cup of Nations, it will be a huge surprise if another quality striker (finally Leandro Damiao?) isn't brought in.

(Image: Getty)

As it is, the Montpelier playmaker Younes Belhanda would do very nicely and if Levy were to succeed with their bid to hijack Fenerbahce's £14million move for him then that would be another nice bit of business.

It is what the Spurs chairman does, and has done very well judging by his moves in recent seasons.

By the time Dimitar Berbatov realised over the long term that the grass wasn't necessarily greener the £30million that Levy had managed to rake in for him from United had already accrued a fair bit of interest in the bank.

So too the £27million package that Levy thrashed out with Real Madrid for Luka Modric.

You know what he did last summer: He stamped his feet until he got his move, yet was recently voted La Liga's worst signing for 2012.

His fee, however, is nestling nicely in Tottenham's account.

At times White Hart Lane big chief has seemed more Daniel Craig than Levy with his hard bargains, calculated risks and his nerveless insistence on taking it to the wire.

But his gamble to axe the man that had led Spurs to two top-four finishes in three years (and did more in the Champions League than City did with a £300million outlay) looks to be paying off.

A fair few Spurs fans will drink to that.