Tottenham Hotspur news round-up: New stadium to open, De Jong praises club - 3rd April 2019
Welcome to the first edition of Sportskeeda’s Tottenham Hotspur news roundup – a one-stop shop for all the current stories relating to Spurs, be it their push for a top four finish in the Premier League or any transfer rumours currently surrounding Mauricio Pochettino’s side.
As always Tottenham have been in the news a lot recently, for one major reason in particular – which we’ll get to in a second – but in all honesty, the stories surrounding the club are posing more questions than answers right now. Let’s get to it.
The new stadium is finally ready to open!
Fans of Tottenham will be please to hear that the new White Hart Lane stadium – which has been in development for a few years now and has faced numerous delays in 2018/19 – is finally good to go, and Spurs will play their first game there against Crystal Palace tonight.
That means, of course, that those infamous Tube posters stating that the stadium would be “the only place to watch Champions League football in London” will finally be correct, as the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final with Manchester City will be held there.
A couple of trial games have already been played at the stadium, of course – most notably a match between a team of Tottenham legends and a team of legends from Inter Milan. Tottenham lost the game 4-5 in the end but it didn’t really matter, as most of the news coming out of the match surrounded the cameo performance from cult hero Paul Gascoigne – who looked relatively healthy for his standards.
Other club legends to make appearances included Dimitar Berbatov, Robbie Keane, Jurgen Klinsmann and David Ginola.
The BBC have produced a short video to explain the stadium “in numbers”, but outside of the capacity – 62,062, the biggest in London – it seems more focused on refreshments, as the video reports that the 65m bar will be the biggest in Europe – but won’t serve plastic straws.
Spurs fans will hope that the opening of the new stadium will encourage an upturn in their side’s form, which has dipped of late, but The Telegraph has some worrying statistics that suggest the opposite could happen – their analysis of 10 teams who moved stadium in the past 20 years shows that home form initially slips upon the move.