When blue meets white in London, there will be more than just the usual Chelsea versus Tottenham sub-plots at play.

It’s fourth versus fifth, where a win for the latter could see them leapfrog their visitors into the top four. It’s a first visit to the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for Chelsea, who had so many memorable moments at the old White Hart Lane and will be desperate to get one over our rivals on one of the biggest nights of the season at their new home.

It’s Frank Lampard up against Jose Mourinho, two serial trophy winners at Stamford Bridge pitted against each other as managerial adversaries for only the second time, and the first as manager of these two clubs. When the first whistle sounds in N17 on Sunday afternoon, the camera will not know quite where to train the lens first.

Much has been made of Mourinho’s first battle against his former club since taking the job as head coach of our big capital rivals and Lampard is happy for the Chelsea supporters to make their own decision on how to greet their former hero.

‘If you go to one of your fiercest rivals then the fans will give the answer,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten the history or they are disrespecting it. Jose Mourinho is a manager who wants to be in work, he was out of work for a while then Tottenham became an opportunity and he took it.’

While Lampard reiterates his enduring gratitude towards his former boss, he also explains how their relationship intensifies his desire to win the match.

‘I will always have big respect for all my managers and when you go up against someone like that, who was influential for me, it does feel different,’ he said. ‘I have respect for him so going up against him is a good honour and a situation you want to be in.

‘I don’t want to make this out as the me and Jose show. It’s a game against Tottenham and a manager that I absolutely respect. I want to beat him because I respect him and I know what a top manager he is but he wants to beat me because he used to manage Chelsea, he used to manage me and now he’s at Tottenham.

'He wants to win this game probably more than any other game since he’s been there – I’m pretty sure of that.’

As a player, Lampard was involved in plenty of feisty encounters between the two sides, most notably in March 2007 when he deftly swerved a physical attack from a Tottenham fan on the pitch after a 2-1 FA Cup quarter-final replay victory. It is those memories that return to the current Chelsea boss when he assesses whether Spurs are now the biggest of our rivals.

‘We know it’s a huge rivalry and probably in my era as a player it became the bigger of the London derbies,’ he claimed. ‘It certainly felt like that, the fans felt it, the atmosphere in the stadium and on the pitch felt like it so it possibly is.

‘Any rivalry or local derby is a game that ups the ante slightly for players and fans. I definitely felt that as a player and I remember going into those games feeling the eagerness to win but also the desperation not to lose because of what it meant. That’s how it should feel for all of us and it certainly does for me.’

Spearheading the attack for each side will be a talismanic centre-forward, two of English football’s leading marksmen, albeit at different stages of their careers. However, there are similarities between the paths forged by both Tammy Abraham and Harry Kane that Lampard believes makes them quite comparable.

‘There’s no better person for Tammy to look up to in football than Harry Kane,’ Lampard stated. ‘He’s an all-round number nine and, if not the best in the world, then he’s really close to it.

‘Tammy should look up to that and I know he does because that’s how Tammy is. He will try to take on board the work ethic that Harry had to go from multiple loans to being the best striker in the world.'

Much will be needed for the Blues to come away from north London with all three points and Lampard expanded on the topic of courage raised after the recent home defeat to Bournemouth. In that instance, being brave on the ball was the boss’s focal point but he acknowledges courage will have to be shown in different ways away from home against a team like Tottenham.

‘There will always be questions over players and teams but courage and bravery comes in lots of different ways. My position after Bournemouth was that it needed courage to take on a pass when the opposition were defending deep, when it’s a difficult pass where you might give the ball away.

‘Tottenham will be different to that so the courage here will be the atmosphere, the stadium, what’s on the game and the physical nature of playing a Jose Mourinho team. Can we go there and show we’re ready to fight against them and do all those things?’

Read: Lampard on preparations for Tottenham