Mauricio Pochettino is ready for the perils of Tottenham having to balance paying for a new stadium with investing in the squad.
Spurs will move into their new White Hart Lane stadium – reported to be costing up to £1billion – next season, having played at Wembley this campaign while redevelopment has been carried out.
They do not have to look too far across north London to see the difficult situation that can arise after a move to a new ground, with Arsenal no longer the real heavyweight force they were before moving from Highbury to the Emirates Stadium.
The Gunners have not regularly been able to match big-spending trio Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea in the transfer market while also selling their best players in recent years.
Spurs have never been known as the game’s biggest spenders anyway, so Pochettino is not surprised chairman Daniel Levy is having sleepless nights.
Asked when the new stadium will be paid for, the boss replied: “I don’t know, Daniel knows better than me!
“I hope that as soon as possible we can put all the focus on football only.
“I am sure that Arsene (Wenger) knows very well that it is not easy to build a stadium this type of stadium, and then getting good results and being competitive. It is so tough.
“I think it is a very difficult job for Daniel. I can understand why he struggles to sleep at night because it is amazing – you need to be worried, not worried, but focused.
“I think the last four seasons you can see that we spend in four years, a net zero, or £400,000.
“That is a little bit of the philosophy of the club. We have not finished the stadium and facilities.
“That is why we feel very proud to feel what the team have achieved and can be competitive with big sides that spend a lot of money and at the same time to help the club build a new stadium which will be fantastic.”
With the impressive new stadium rising from the ground over the last few months, Spurs have made Wembley their home this season and they play there on Saturday against Manchester United in the FA Cup, though this time it is classed as a neutral venue.
That has not stopped some suggesting they will have an unfair advantage over Jose Mourinho’s side, meaning it has gone full circle for them, when all the talk in the summer was of their Wembley hoodoo.
There is no denying Pochettino’s men did struggle at the national stadium early on, but the boss puts their turnaround in form down to a morale-boosting Champions League win against Borussia Dortmund.
“I think that’s when we started to feel (like home),” he said.
“I think Dortmund at that moment was the best team in Germany, was one of the best teams in Europe, was doing fantastic, doing fantastic at the top of the table in the Bundesliga and, at that moment, I think felt as if we started to feel (like home).
“The atmosphere was brilliant, the fans were brilliant, fantastic, and I think in that moment we changed to believing we could win, we started to feel like Wembley was home for us and I think that was the massive change for the team.”