Tottenham Hotspur manager Mauricio Pochettino has claimed that his team will be ‘better than Liverpool’ now they have moved to their new stadium.
Spurs officially move into their exceptional new stadium on Wednesday night when Pochettino’s team take on Crystal Palace, and the Argentine believes the ground holds the key to getting one over on the Reds.
“I was talking with Daniel [Levy] after the Liverpool game and sometimes people compare us with Liverpool,” he said, as per France 24. “[Virgil] Van Dijk was £75 million 18 months ago. The keeper [Allison] was £70 million. They had two midfielders on the bench who they spent more than £100 million on in the summer.
“The people sometimes say an opinion of Tottenham is like Liverpool. In what? Yes, now we are going to be better than Liverpool because we have a better stadium and better training ground.”
OPINION
It’s hard to discern how serious Pochettino was being, here. Perhaps he had his tongue in his cheek with that last line, but certainly the move to the new stadium is expected to be the thing that pushes Tottenham over the edge. They believe that they will now be able to compete at the top level with teams like Liverpool and Manchester City, because they have the stadium and the facilities to attract world class players and generally become a bigger club. Pochettino makes a decent point about the amount of money some of Liverpool’s players cost, but no one forced Spurs not to buy anyone in the past two transfer windows. That was their decision, not Liverpool’s. So Pochettino can’t really moan about the Reds’ spending when they had the option to spend big themselves. They’ve spent a fair bit of money themselves over the years on players like Davinson Sanchez. However, if Pochettino feels that his team will suddenly be up there with Liverpool because they’ve got a shiny new stadium he’s likely sadly mistaken.
