Three points separate Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur in the table as the Premier League prepares to enter its energy-sapping and momentum-swinging festive period. Both top-four pretenders have won two league games in a row and they meet at White Hart Lane on Sunday afternoon. Yet despite the minute differences, they are separated by a chasm of perception.

Tottenham, goal-shy and lacking a leading edge, have supposedly lurched from crisis to crisis, with the manager André Villas-Boas apparently on the brink of his losing his job just a fortnight ago before winning three of the next four in all competitions. By comparison, Brendan Rodgers' team have been free scoring in steamrollering the bottom half of the Premier League and sit in second place, just five points shy of Arsenal.

Victory for the home side on Sunday, however, will see them draw level with their rivals, although the eight-goal swing required to see Spurs leapfrog Liverpool is unlikely. Should Tottenham prevail, a glance at the festive fixture list suggests they may pull away, with the Reds facing trips to Manchester City and Chelsea between Christmas and new year.

Though to assume that Spurs will beat West Bromwich Albion and Stoke City at home over Christmas is to reckon against an unpredictable league season and their own inadequacies. In their seven league matches at White Hart Lane, Villas-Boas's team have scored just four goals from open play and lost to Newcastle and West Ham United.

Spurs are one point better off than they were after 15 games last season but have scored 13 fewer goals – it leads many to the lazy observation that they have a Gareth Bale-shaped hole in their attack. But at this stage a year ago the Welshman had scored just six of his 21 league goals, and had shown mere glimpses of the sparkling late-season form which enabled him to win games almost singlehandedly and be named a two-time player of the year.

Villas-Boas's main dilemma has been trying to integrate his seven summer signings, and finding space for the £30m Argentinian playmaker Erik Lamela, who has so far been afforded just 237 minutes of Premier League football. Spurs have, though, excelled defensively where, despite the 6–0 aberration at Manchester City last month, their record of seven clean sheets is second only to Everton.

For Brendan Rodgers the trip to White Hart Lane is the precursor to what is shaping up to be the defining month of his Liverpool reign. Trips to the Etihad and Stamford Bridge loom, and injuries to Sturridge and Gerrard have served to dampen already low expectations.

During his 18-month spell on Merseyside Rodgers has failed to win away from home against any of the so-called top six. Even with fixtures at Anfield taken into account the Northern Irishman has presided over only two victories in 15, a 3-2 win over Spurs last season and a 1-0 triumph over Manchester United in September.

Liverpool have conceded two or more goals in 12 of the 15, and have, on average, conceded the first goal against a top-six side away from home in the 23rd minute.

Only once have the team kept a clean sheet into the second half of these fixtures. In the corresponding meeting with Spurs last year Liverpool were 2-0 down inside the first 15 minutes and playing catch-up. It's a familiar tale for Rodgers' Liverpool.

But big-game struggles are nothing new in the recent history of Anfield managers. It took Rafa Benítez until his fifth season, 2008-9, before he took three points from Stamford Bridge and Old Trafford; between 2004 and 2010 the Spaniard lost 16 of 26 away games against legitimate title and Champions League rivals.

The busy festive schedule will serve as a yardstick for Rodgers and despite the lengthening injury list, depleting numbers in midfield and a distinct vulnerability in defence, their Champions League hopes remain realistic.

In Luis Suárez, Rodgers possesses not just the league's top scorer but the form player in the country. Rodgers' refinement of Liverpool's system, and centralising of Suárez to it, has seen the Uruguayan's game take a stratospheric turn. He has scored as many goals (15) in 10 games, as he managed in a season and a half with Kenny Dalglish at the helm.

Under Rodgers, Suárez has struck 38 times in 43 games compared to 15 in 44 with the Scot. He has become not merely a scorer of great goals, but a great goalscorer to boot.

In the buildup to the 4-1 win over West Ham last weekend, Rodgers identified the sale of Andy Carroll as pivotal to the transformation of Suárez: "What we try to do here is create the environment for the elite player and he is an elite player. I had to make a call last year by letting Andy Carroll go out and create a situation where we could get the benefit out of Luis's talent.

"But he still had to perform and he has done that tremendously well. It was maybe said that he needed a lot of chances to score goals before, but his goals record was still fairly good. Now it is an opportunity and it's a goal."

Despite Suárez's glittering form, Liverpool's charge up the table will not be taken seriously until they are able to defeat a leading rival away from home. Being a flat-track bully has its virtues but it can only get you so far; with Tottenham's home difficulties this year, it's an ideal opportunity for Rodgers to shed his unwanted record.

For all Liverpool's obvious progress under the former Swansea manager, it is difficult to pin down a result that defines what he has achieved in his first 18 months. While Villas-Boas can point to a victory at Old Trafford and home defeats of Manchester City and Arsenal, Rodgers has fallen agonisingly short on a number of occasions.

After an annus horribilis in 2012, where Liverpool claimed just 44 points out of a possible 117, Rodgers has brought recovery. Of Liverpool's 64 points claimed during this calendar year, 45 have come from beating bottom-half sides. Though he has struggled translating Liverpool's verve against lower-half teams to the top sides, he has made Liverpool difficult to beat – after losing 17 league games in 2012, they have lost just six this calendar year.

Liverpool in 2013 have the look of progress about them. But do Tottenham? Since falling short of Champions League qualification by a single point in May, Spurs look to have taken a sideways step.

But that sweeping statement illustrates the difficulty with assessing a Premier League season where every side apart from Arsenal appear incapable of putting together winning sequences. The search for the unquantifiable answer has leapt beyond the rational answer too often this season. Spurs, the crisis club before Manchester United lost consecutive games at home last week, personify that.

For both Villas-Boas and Rodgers this weekend's encounter offers the chance to challenge perceptions that they are either under- or over-achieving. But in this season where Manchester United can lose consecutive home games to Everton and Newcastle United, Manchester City can lose at Cardiff City, Aston Villa and Sunderland, and Chelsea at Newcastle and Stoke, who can say who is achieving what with conviction?