Wembley Stadium

Sunday 17 December 2017

Tottenham Hotspur 2-0 Brighton and Hove Albion

Aerial shot of Wembley Stadium (Get West London)

Programme - £3.00

Ratings

Overall Ground Quality : 10/10

Ease of getting there : 7/10

Atmosphere : 5/10

Programme : 8/10

View of Action : 6/10

Quality of the game : 5/10

The "football" feeling : 8/10

Chances of coming here for a random game : 7/10

Legroom : 10/10

Surrounding area : 8/10

Overall : 74/100

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Tottenham Hotspur 2-0 Brighton and Hove Albion

In the week where large parts of central England were submerged in snow, Adrian and I were glad to be getting out the East Midlands away from the difficult driving conditions to the slightly milder conditions of the capital visiting the national stadium play host to Tottenham Hotspur against Brighton and Hove Albion. Whilst Tottenham Hotspur’s White Hart Lane is being reconstructed into a state of the art 61,000 seater stadium, the Lilywhites have relocated to Wembley Stadium for the 2017/18 season with the possibility of their stay in North West London being extended for at least a second season.

With it being a night match, I (Ross) took half a day off work and drove straight to Adrian’s house from work. We set off at around 1pm making our way down the M1 southbound. With a quick toilet stop at Toddington services, we reached Kingsbury at around 3.30pm parking the car in our usual spot on Melbury Road. We walked the short distance up Honeypot Lane to Morrisons supermarket in Queensbury to eat our dinner in the café. After eating our pre-match meal, we walked to the Underground station in Queensbury taking the Jubilee Line to Wembley Park. With time on our side, we decided to grab a cup of tea in a busy McDonalds before exploring the area surround Wembley. Since our last visit during the Community Shield match between Manchester United and Leicester City just a year and a half ago, the area has since removed all last remaining patches of land and grass with high-rise buildings with huge plans to even build on the large car parking space to the North-East of Wembley Stadium. The future plans around Wembley will almost create a city within a city with a large number of apartments, student accommodation and amenities such as a shopping centre, Wembley Arena and of course not forgetting Wembley Stadium itself! After taking photos outside and buying a programme, we headed to the turnstiles where we were searched outside the turnstiles and also inside (more security checks than an airport!). With our seats being in the 20^th row of the top tier, we made our way up the numerous flights of escalators. The concourse area didn’t appear to be like you usual football ground concourse area but instead appears to be more like a cinema reception area with various confectionary on sale such as popcorn, pick ‘n’ mix sweets and hotdogs on sale. When we took to our seats, we noticed the vast number of empty seats around the stadium and the difficult Spurs fans were finding it to create any sort of atmosphere. There seemed to be more atmosphere coming from the 3,000 Brighton fans crammed into the South-East corner of the lower tier.

Wembley Stadium was opened in 2007, on the site of the original Wembley Stadium, which was demolished from 2002–2003. Wembley Stadium is a UEFA category four stadium. With 90,000 seats it is the second largest stadium in Europe and the largest stadium in the United Kingdom. It is owned by The Football Association. Designed by HOK Sport and Foster and Partners, it includes a partially retractable roof and the 134-metre-high (440 ft) Wembley Arch. The stadium was built by Australian firm Multiplex at a cost of £798 million. The all-seater stadium is based around a bowl design with a capacity of 90,000, protected from the elements by a sliding roof that does not completely enclose it. It can also be adapted as an athletic stadium by erecting a temporary platform over the lowest tier of seating. The stadium's signature feature is a circular section lattice arch of 7 m (23 ft) internal diameter with a 315 m (1,033 ft) span, erected some 22° off true, and rising to 133 m (436 ft). It supports all the weight of the north roof and 60% of the weight of the retractable roof on the southern side. The archway is the world's longest unsupported roof structure. A "platform system" has been designed to convert the stadium for athletics use, but its use would decrease the stadium's capacity to approximately 60,000.

A bitterly cold December evening at Wembley, the temporary home of Tottenham and at times the atmosphere and the football did little to warm the heart for this neutral observer. The atmosphere is certainly nothing like White Hart Lane, muted at best and any noise to be heard really came from the packed away end.

The football was also hard work, we had two teams, one that wanted to play and be positive the other exactly the opposite. I can understand Brighton manager, Chris Hughton’s reluctance to open up, but their 10 men behind the ball blocking, denying space etc is all very well but surely you have to have a go a bit? Lose fair enough but lose trying to be positive and trying to make a game of it. This philosophy was not in much evidence as far as I could see.

Tottenham as you would expect were of a different mind-set, but to be fair they have some highly talented world class players. It was therefore a relief when they finally took the lead just prior to the break. The goal was somewhat fortunate but richly deserved. Serge Aurier the right back delivered a cross from the right which looped over the Brighton keeper Matt Ryan into the net. He was being fouled at the time and as everyone stopped expecting a free kick the ref correctly gave the attacker the advantage and gave the goal.

The second half was better, but again all Spurs with the Seagulls unable or unwilling to commit men forward in greater numbers. This meant a relatively comfortable night for the home sides defence. Just by chance Brighton did fashion one opportunity, Hemed firing straight at Lloris from inside the box .He really should have scored to level, moments later he was subbed!

Tottenham continued to dominate possession, Ryan denied Kane with his feet, Lamela and Kane both hit the post, Eriksen trying his best to find space and create goal scoring opportunities. They did manage a second goal with 7 mins left. The Dane delivering a free kick from the right and the South Korean, Son heading home at the near post via a slight deflection. It was no more than Tottenham deserved, they had found Brighton a struggle to break down but they had kept plugging away and got their reward.

On a freezing December night, not a game that will live long in the memory. The best team won. Brighton’s tactic of parking the bus failed and while I understand the reasons behind all this as a football fan I actually wanted to be entertained. As Alan Durban the Stoke City manager once said at around the same time as these clubs last met in the top flight, “if you want entertainment go to a circus!”

This weekend I will consider either going to Billy Smarts or watching Leicester City v Crystal Palace!

When Bobby Madley signalled the end of the match, Adrian and I dashed towards the exit and made the very long and winding journey down the many flights of stairs to the bottom. Running certainly helped keep us warm! We then ran back down Wembley Way to the Underground station where we joined the lengthy queues to the platforms. Whilst queueing in the drizzle, we received a call to say that it had snowed again and the conditions were bad in East Midlands. We reached our platform and hopped onto the train heading northbound on the Jubilee Line getting off at the next stop and made our way back to the car.

Just 15 minutes into the journey and we already started having problems on the M1 with traffic going from 3 lanes to 1 lane ready for overnight roadworks. After this, generally, the journey back to the East Midlands flowed well reaching Adrian’s house at 12:15am. There appeared to be no more than a small scattering of snow at Adrian’s house which meant I needed to de-ice my car and I decided to stick to the main roads. I got back onto the M1 travelling to the next junction until I reached tailback of traffic which saw me queue on the M1 for an hour for what should’ve been a 30 minute journey. I later found that the reason for such queues was due to snow and ice yet the motorway was clear! When I eventually got off the M1, the roads all the way to my house were very slippy with ice and snow which added another 15 minutes onto my journey and to my relief, I eventually got home for 1:40am ready for my 6am alarm.

Everyone enjoys a visit to our national stadium however the match wasn’t a classic and isn’t one to be remembered as for the journey home, I don’t think I will forget that for a very long time!