WEMBLEY A BIG TEST FOR SPURS
YOU know the problem with playing your home games at Wembley? It makes opponents 10ft tall.
I can guarantee you that every side who goes there this season to face Spurs will lift their game by 20 to 25 per cent.
That is the effect the venue has – I don’t know exactly why. But even playing there in the Premier League, players will find something extra.
I went there as a kid and I remember being on the terraces, taking in all that colour and noise – and thinking I would so love to play there.
I did against Bolton in the Coca-cola Cup final. It was magical.
Back then, there was still a running track around the outside, so it was not even intimate, but it was still something that blew your mind as a player. I went back the next year for the FA Cup Final – the less said about that, the better – and then the Euros (the less said about Terry Venables not bringing me on in the semifinal to take a penalty against Germany, the better, too).
Spurs were brilliant at home last season, but this is going to test them.
They didn’t do so well at Wembley in the Champions League.
It will be interesting to see how they cope. And they will get a proper test from Chelsea this weekend. If Pep Guardiola is an obsessive, then Antonio Conte can be even worse and will be smarting from the opening-day defeat against Burnley.
He will have had his squad on that training ground all week working on defensive discipline.