Size Matters – Adjusting to Playing at Wembley

Times they are a changing, but are they changing too fast? While the move to Wembley for home games next season will no doubt be good for the club’s coffers, could the change have a detrimental effect on the team? Let’s consider the facts.

West Ham’s troubles at the Olympic Stadium are plain for all to see (and rather pleasant to witness), but before we laugh too hard at their (fully deserved) fall from a temporary grace, let’s just ponder our own fortunes. You see, it’s not just karma that got to West Ham for pulling off the stadium scam of the century, there are actual physics involved too, namely the larger pitch.

And if West Ham, who were admittedly putting in decent performances toward the end of their time at the Boleyn Ground, can have a spot of bother on their shiny new pitch, who’s to say our lads won’t? The move to a larger pitch is a big change, and it’s something that we sincerely hope the boss will address in his preseason training.

Last season, the team was playing their home games on a pitch that was 100m x 67m or 6,700 square metres, whereas the pitch at Wembley measures 105m x 69m or 7,245 square metres. Now, to the casual football fan, this might not seem like a massive difference; players are, after all, professional athletes and a few extra square metres should be no trouble at all to them. The problem is that in terms of passing and crossing, those extra few yards will make a hell of a difference.

Just as an example, the players that now ping balls in from about 25 metres will have an extra two or three metres plus the required elevation to add to their crosses. Then there’s the through balls from Dele. He’ll have to add a bit more weight to his passes and Kane will, in turn, must adjust his running and sense of positioning to stay in form.

Now to put the pitch size into perspective, White Hart Lane was the second smallest pitch in the league with only Stoke having fewer blades of grass than us. Wembley, on the other hand, is the largest pitch in the league.

But they play on bigger pitches every other week, you say? Well, not quite. While many of the clubs with newer stadiums did have larger pitches than us last season, there were plenty that were marginally bigger. So, it wasn’t quite every other week.  

Of course, this should pose no problem to seasoned professionals, and we all know that the team is nothing but absolute pros. But, and it’s a big but, there’s bound to be a bedding-in period, and if we don’t hit the ground running, then we could be playing catch-up by the end of September.

Chelsea is the litmus test as our first home game of the season, and if we can get a result against the champions, we’ll send out a message to the rest of the league to fear Wembley. However, we also have Burnley and Swansea as potential “banana skins” before the end of September and should either of those teams expose us on our temporary home ground, then the whole fortress idea goes out the window pretty sharpish.

BetStars have us at 9/1 to win the league, which aren’t great odds for a team that finished second. Could it be that they factored in the stadium move and the adjustment to playing on a larger pitch? It probably has more to do with the rather ridiculous transfer rumours doing the rounds, but the fact is that unless Pochettino gets the squad training on the Wembley pitch or at least adjusts his training program, our opponents might not be the only problems we have to overcome at the start of the season.