Tottenham new stadium: Mauricio Pochettino challenges Spurs to start ‘behaving like a big club’

Mauricio Pochettino says he has told chairman Daniel Levy it’s time for Tottenham Hotspur to “think” and “behave like a big club” now they have finally moved into their new stadium, as he added this summer will the most “massive” since his arrival.

With the team set to play their first fixture at the new ground on Wednesday, in a match against Crystal Palace suddenly vital to Champions League qualification, the Argentine explained how it has put the club into “a different dimension” - “10 times, 100 times” greater.

Pochettino again pointed to the far greater team expenditure of a club like Liverpool, but argued that Spurs’ infrastructure is now “better”, and that it is time to match it with performance and signings.

While the manager’s comments could be taken as again more publicly imploring Levy to spend on the team - in a similar vein to the end of last season - Pochettino did effusively praise his chairman, and said that people would have asked the Argentine “what does he smoke and what pills does he take” had he claimed they would now be in this healthy position on arriving in 2014.

The manager name-checked Barcelona, Real Madrid, Juventus and Bayern Munich as the clubs they want to compete with, as he believes this is what the stadium will allow.

“Now, when you arrive here, it looks like a big club,” Pochettino said. “Before you could say: ‘Yeah, but the stadium only holds 36,000’. But now, when you arrive here there is no point in thinking like a small club. You must think like a big club. But for sure to be close to the big clubs, the way that the big clubs think.

“If you want to compare to Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Juventus or Real Madrid, you can’t think you are Tottenham with 36,000. We need to think like a big club and that is the most important step that we need to make. Of course, you say to me: ‘With you? Without you?’ I don’t know. That is about Daniel.

“But I think my responsibility, like it was five years ago, is to tell the club: ‘Now, we’ve finished the new stadium, we are going to think like a big club. What does it mean to think like a big club?’ That is what we have to discuss about the project. It’s normal, isn’t it? Nothing wrong, its just describing the situation in terms of what has happened

“My project, when I started five years ago, was to arrive in the new stadium and try to be a competitive team in year two and then be in the Champions League. We are ahead [of schedule] now. In the new stadium we will play in the Champions League.

“Over the next five years in my mind we are going to finish [the chapter] and we need to close the chapters and we need to start thinking we are a club in different dimensions – we are not in Chigwell any more we are not at White Hart Lane with 36,000. The magnitude of the club has grown 10 times, 100 times. We are in another dimension. We cannot operate in the same way as five years ago – we are a different dimension.”

Pochettino says he wasn’t concerned by the recent bad run form in relative terms. Returning to the theme of ambition, he put the improved performance in the 2-1 defeat to Liverpool in the context of their contrasting expenditure, but argued Spurs now have a superior infrastructure.

“I was talking with Daniel after the Liverpool game and sometimes people compare us with Liverpool and say the very good action of [Virgil] van Dijk. Van Dijk was £75m 18 months ago. The keeper [Alisson Becker] was £70m. They had two midfielders on the bench who they spent more than £100m 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. Yes but now is another thing to compete as we need to operate maybe similar to them in the future or not. We will see which is the project.

“But the effort we were doing – first the chairman, the fans, the players and the staff - to be now sitting here is massive. And when you look back for a few games that in the past few weeks that we were not good. And in the last game we deserved much more against a team that is building and competing to win the Champions League and Premier League but with pressure as they invest a lot in the last four-five years. And we are there. It is a massive point to be so happy. But thinking that we must be clever in how we are going to start and project and the vision for the future of the club.

“Now we need to behave like a big club in every single aspect and every single department. That is only my point when I talk with Daniel.

“But I feel more than proud sitting with you after five years to say ‘job done’ we are here, we are in the Champions League, we are in the top four when no one believed that five years ago when it was only to reduce the gap with the big clubs. No one believed when we explained five years ago that we are going to do this and that and be contenders and we are going to compete. I think that the people start to write that this guy what does he smoke and what pills does he take.”

Asked whether this would be a big summer, Pochettino said: “It’s going to be massive.”

The biggest? “Yes.”