SPURS’ STADIUM MEANS NOTHING, SAYS DE BRUYNE

KEVIN DE BRUYNE has dismissed the impact of Tottenham’s new stadium ahead of tomorrow’s crunch Champions League quarter-final.

Spurs flung open the doors to their £1billion project last week and tomorrow signals its first night of European football, against Manchester City.

De Bruyne refuted that the new home will offer any sort of advantage for Mauricio Pochettino’s side ahead of the first leg — even though Tottenham’s Harry Winks believes the atmosphere will be ‘daunting’.

‘Everybody talks about the stadium like it’s something special,’ De Bruyne said. ‘Everybody has a stadium. Everybody has supporters. I don’t care about the stadium. I care about the team we play. They’ll be up for it. I don’t think there will be any difference.

‘They’ll probably be a little bit more excited but in the end it’s a stadium with supporters. If they go to Wembley with 80,000 or there with 62,000, it’s going to be the same. It’ll be a tough game but I think we’ll be all right.’

City, still gunning for an historic Quadruple, are picking up injuries at an alarming rate, with Pep Guardiola revealing that Kyle Walker sustained a hamstring problem against Brighton on Saturday. Aleks Zinchenko and Fabian Delph are also question marks for Tuesday with niggling injuries.

Walker will be given the opportunity to prove his fitness before tomorrow’s game. City have stayed in the capital to ease their travel fatigue and received massages in the dressing room straight after reaching the FA Cup final to accelerate their recuperation.

‘Every game from now until the end is going to be like this,’ De Bruyne added.

‘Eighty or 90 per cent of the time we’ll have fewer rest days. People underestimate how the fixtures come so quickly. We don’t even have time to rest so how can we think about what’s going to happen in four weeks, we’re just going to hopefully play well on Tuesday.’

Guardiola added: ‘We’ve won 22 of the last 23 so it’s not bad. If we want to be in contention in all competitions you have to make these numbers.

‘We don’t have time to tell ourselves, “Oh, it’s so good. How nice is everything” because the only focus right now is don’t drink one drop alcohol, rest, eat well, regenerate and prepare for one of the best teams in the Premier League and Europe. They had six days to prepare and we had two-and-a-half.’