Pochettino Confirms Key Quartet Will Miss Chelsea Clash
- by Nick Cohen
- in Industry
- — Nov 25, 2016
Defeat away to Monaco on Tuesday ended Tottenham's hopes of reaching the last 16 of the Champions League but they will fall into the Europa League if they avoid defeat by CSKA Moscow in their final home match on December 7.
Tottenham Hotspur manager Mauricio Pochettino confirms that the club will remain at Wembley if they drop into the Europa League in the new year.
"The players need to be focused on playing", Pochettino said. "That is the most important thing. We have a very good relationship about that and there is nothing to say about that". We will play the Europa League in Wembley and we need to make it out home.
Tottenham's carefully-worded announcement of their deal with the Football Association (FA) stated that the club would play "Champions League fixtures for the 2016-17 season" at the 90,000-capacity national stadium, making no mention of "European" or "Europa League" matches. "We need to make it our home", Pochettino was quoted as saying by the Telegraph on Thursday.
"I don't know where that news has started". Never - we will play at Wembley. It is a good opportunity to play the next game (against CSKA Moscow) in Wembley and then to play there if we have the possibility in the Europa League. It's a big motivation for me personally and must be for the players too. "You can not stop and try to complain or blame".
"Only you can stop to analyse and be calm to assess the team".
Spurs are scheduled to play all their homes matches, domestic and European, at Wembley next season while White Hart Lane is being redeveloped and the manager may be keen to have more playing time at the venue in order to help the players past their unease. That is the most important, because the new stadium is coming and we need to move to Wembley next season.
Pochettino said Toby Alderweireld (knee), Érik Lamela (hip) and Ben Davies (ankle) were out of Saturday's visit to Chelsea while Danny Rose is suspended. We need to starting thinking of Wembley as our home and avoid all of the negative things about Wembley.
"It's true that our expectation was that [Toby] would recover earlier, and it's true we miss him a lot - but we're happy". Tomorrow we have another training session to decide which players are available to play.
"I hope I am wrong but I expect a tight, tetchy affair and it wouldn't surprise me if referee Michael Oliver is in for a busy night".
