Tottenham Hotspur have tried to keep their bid for Champions League football next season alive by asking the Premier League for a replay of their match against West Ham after several of their players were struck down by food poisoning on the morning of the game.
Tottenham lost the end-of-season match 2-1 at Upton Park on Sunday. Had they won they would have secured fourth place in the Premiership and qualification for the Champions League.
As it was, Spurs were pipped to fourth spot by north-London rivals Arsenal, who beat Wigan 4-2 in the final match at Highbury, sparking a host of instant conspiracy theories.
Even if they’d lost, Arsenal would still have had an opportunity to deny Spurs a Champions League spot by defeating Barcelona in next week’s European Cup final in Paris.
Despite the illness of the Tottenham players, Premier League officials said the match had to be played on Sunday.
”Clearly, our governing body put us in an impossible situation and gave a significant advantage to Arsenal in competing for that fourth position,” said Tottenham chairperson Daniel Levy in an open letter published on Tuesday to Premier League counterpart Dave Richards.
”We now have confirmation from a majority of Premier League clubs that they would support a replay and in similar circumstances would expect the game to have been postponed … We therefore formally request that you order that the game be replayed,” Levy added.
”Our medical staff advised that a delay of at least three hours would be necessary to have any impact on the players and therefore it was [manager] Martin Jol’s view that, in the absence of a postponement or a much later kick-off, we had no choice whatsoever but to proceed to play at 3pm,” said Levy, who added that 10 of Spurs’s 17 match-day squad felt ”very unwell”.
It is understood that the Spurs players became ill after a buffet meal at their hotel on Saturday evening. Tottenham are said to be considering legal action against the hotel. — AFP
