Spurs toughest season ever coming up

This season is arguably going to be the most difficult season we have ever faced on the playing field.

We have made the Champions League once in 2010.11, the attack, attack, attack era that Rafael van der Vaart recalled recently. Our objective was to go as far as possible in the competition and try to finish in the top four again. We made it to the quarter-finals where Peter Crouch getting himself sent-off put paid to any chances we might have had. That season we defied all expectation, with others, particularly Arsenal fans expecting us to finish bottom of the Group.

This season though is more difficult. We have a top four position to defend against a stronger set of teams and more of them this time. The competition at the top in the Premier League has grown and will be at its strongest for some time with the return of Liverpool as contenders.

Then we have a young group of players who have not experienced the Champions League arena before, but this time, we will be playing our games at Wembley. That means we will be training on a bigger pitch than we are used to, we will have to adapt. Then there is the mental side. We have to make Wembley feel like home, perhaps the fact that it is home the following season will help, but when Arsenal played there they couldn't generate that feeling.

The players will have a couple of days training on a larger pitch then switch for a couple of days training on a smaller pitch, then back to a larger pitch. It isn't going to be easy, even if we are going to replicate the Wembley pitch at Hotspur Way.

The fact that we are going to do that shows the attention to detail I have often discussed, the Kaizen approach. You improve every detail, however small and those improvements add up to make a difference.

Th season will be the toughest yet, but with Pochettino at the helm we'll be doing everything we can to help the players make a success of it.

---