Stoke boss Hughes: 'We have to be better and tougher than before'

Mark Hughes is confident his Stoke City charges can give us a run for our money at Wembley on Saturday.

We’ve won 4-0 in our last three consecutive meetings with the Potters and will be targeting another positive result at the national stadium after a confidence-boosting 3-0 win over APOEL in the Champions League in midweek.

Asked at his pre-match press conference how he feels about coming to Wembley, Hughes told reporters: “There is a perception that they (Spurs) haven’t done too well at Wembley, but they demolished Real Madrid not too long ago. Teams are setting their stall out this year against them and that has affected them.

“Whenever we went up against them we always thought it was the toughest game for us – for whatever reason they always cause us problems. We will be looking to address that, so we have to be better and be tougher to beat than we have done in the past.

“Some of the players from those previous matches aren’t with us any more, we have a different make-up of the squad now, we shape up differently, so those previous results won’t affect us this weekend. We just need to try and affect the game in a positive manner.”

On how he expects his players to react to turning out at the national stadium, Hughes added: “A number of the guys have played at Wembley before and others haven’t but we are emphasising the fact that it is a Premier League game.

“I will leave the guys to decide how they approach it. As long as they aren’t out there with cameras taking photos and the like, I will leave them to deal with it how they see fit.”

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