Mason's youngsters ready to give their all in Munich

Ryan Mason says our young players will step onto the pitch “with a hunger inside them” as we face a must-win game in the UEFA Youth League in Munich on Wednesday afternoon.

Sitting third in Group B of the Under-19 competition – the fixtures for which mirror those of the senior Champions League – we take on Bayern Munich’s youth team at the FC Bayern Campus needing a positive result to stand a chance of progressing to the knockout stages.

Indeed, we must better Crvena zvezda’s result away to Olympiacos if we’re to leapfrog the Serbian side into second place and book our place in the play-off round in the New Year. Bayern beat us 4-1 at Hotspur Way on matchday two and have already won the group, meaning they’ll go through automatically to the last 16.

“It’s a must-win game,” said former midfielder Ryan, who is now our Academy Coach with responsibility for taking the team in the UEFA Youth League. “We’re a bit frustrated that we’re in this position because we feel that we should have done enough to be in control of our own destiny to be honest, but that’s not the case. We’re relying on results elsewhere to favour us as well, but it’s another big game and it’s all part of European football. I remember the first team had a similar situation last year at the end of the group stage where they had to go to Barcelona, but our focus is on trying to win the game – that’s all we’re thinking about.

“We are confident and I’m sure the lads have a lot of hunger inside them because we lost 4-1 at home to Bayern. They fully deserved to win but at the same time, at 2-1, we hit the crossbar and in football you never know because things change, but it’s important that we go into the game hungry, aggressive and believe that we can win it.

“Bayern are a juggernaut in Germany, it’s a football club with a big history and it’s a massive test for the lads. Obviously we can’t lose sight of the fact that their development and their future in the game is the most important thing. Playing against a good, strong Bayern side with some of the best young players in Germany, it’s a great experience, a great learning curve and it’s a test and a marker of where the players are actually at in their careers.”

Kick-off on Wednesday afternoon is at 4pm local time in Munich, 3pm in the UK. The match is being televised live on BT Sport, while we’ll bring you the usual live match updates on Twitter @SpursOfficial.