Spurs DO have a problem with Wembley and need to face some home truths

I COULD have turned up for games at The Hawthorns with two broken legs, two broken arms and a blindfold, and I’d have still scored against West Brom.

But Goodison Park? Forget it. I could have been the only player on the pitch and I’d have still struggled to register at Everton.

So I don’t care what anyone says, stadiums can affect players, and that’s why Wembley is an issue for Tottenham.

I saw Jan Molby before the SpursChelsea game and asked him: ‘Jan, is it me or do players have those days, those games and those stadiums?’

Jan replied: ‘Absolutely, they do.’

There are certain grounds you go to and you just don’t have good games.

You go out with the best will in the world and saying it doesn’t really make a difference but for whatever reason – and it could be anything – it just doesn’t feel right for you.

And if even two or three Tottenham players feel that way about Wembley then it will be a problem for the rest of the team.

Of course, there are some who would play well on the moon, and Harry Kane and Dele Alli dovetailed very well, in the first half particularly,

But there will have been Spurs stars waking up yesterday thinking, ‘Well, we pummelled them and still didn’t win.’ That way of thinking can become dangerous. The fact Spurs played really well and lost shows they have a problem. So what they need to do now is put together a run of five or six games unbeaten and they – and the rest of us – can start to forget about it. There’s not a lot you can do about the problem either, other than going out and eventually something clicking. Spurs have cut an exact replica of the Wembley pitch at their training ground but when I hear of teams doing that it always makes me laugh. I think, “What, you mean you’ve put a football pitch down?” Pitches in the Premier League are all virtually identical these days anyway, they are made of the same synthetic grass. And there aren’t the Yeovils or Wycombes with a left-to-right kink, or pitches like Birmingham or White Hart Lane, even, that used to crown. So, that’s not going to replicate being at Wembley.

The problem for Spurs is that the pitch at their temporary home plays slow and the atmosphere there sucks the life out of games.

If you watch on TV, there’s a lag at both Wembley and the Olympic Stadium with fans shouting and the noise they make arriving at pitch level.

At White Hart Lane, a roar is a roar, you sense it and it can shake you as a player, you can react to it.

At Wembley and West Ham’s home, it’s more like a sonic boom, when a plane flies by and you hear it a few seconds later.

Something is getting lost in that stadium and, while I expect Spurs to hammer some teams away, unless they put a run together – and fast – home won’t be where the heart is this season.