FA chairman Lord Triesman insists Wembley's pitch problems are now a thing of the past. The old Wembley was famed for its superb playing surface but the new stadium, which is the centre-piece of England's bid to host the 2018 World Cup, has been dogged by problems with its turf.

The pitch was relaid last month for the 10th time since the stadium opened in 2007 due to heavy criticism following the FA Cup semi-finals.

Wembley stages the FA Cup Final on Saturday and Triesman has promised that the same mistakes will not be made.

"We knew how to get a good pitch, it slipped, it went backwards, and we will go back to having a first-class pitch," he said.

"We shouldn't have let this happen and we will have an exceptional pitch. We should never let the lesson slip and we won't."

The design of the stadium does not help the quality of the surface. With the top of the stands more than 100ft from pitch level it cuts out most of the sun and wind.

But Triesman believes that before the semi-final controversies, the FA had shown they can cope with the problem.

"For quite a long period during the season and certainly during the qualification games we got the pitch to be a good pitch and Fabio Capello and everybody else commented that it was a very good playing surface," he added.

"There weren't negative comments from managers or players during that period.

"There's no doubt in my mind that one way or another, whether it was the way it was being maintained or whatever, it slipped backwards.

"But we know how to get a good pitch there and I think people in the international community know that we can and we did.

"Whatever the peculiarities of the microclimate there we can do it, we did do it and we will do it again.

"It is still a relatively new stadium, it has a very peculiar microclimate but we have got the stadium as it is, and we know how to get it to a really good playing surface."