Jonathan Woodgate reveals Middlesbrough’s request was snubbed by Spurs

Tottenham will take on Middlesbrough in an FA Cup third-round replay at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium this evening after the sides played out a 1-1 draw at the Riverside Stadium earlier in the month.

Spurs have five first team players out with injuries and Jose Mourinho confirmed that he is hardly able to shuffle his selection for the game given how depleted the squad is at the moment (Football.London)

Boro will be looking to cause a major upset against Spurs and if they do manage to pull off an unlikely win, they will have Crystal Palace to partly thank.

Boro manager and former Spurs centre half Jonathan Woodgate has confirmed that Palace allowed the Championship club to train at their facilities during their time in London, with the squad spending the next five days in the capital ahead of a Championship trip to Craven Cottage to take on Fulham on Friday evening.

Woodgate also revealed that the club had a request to use Tottenham’s facilities turned down by their FA Cup third-round opponents.

Speaking to the Northern Echo, the Boro manager said, “The plan this week is we will travel down on Monday and we will be away until the early hours of Saturday morning, so we won’t come back. It’s pointless coming back.

“If we go to Spurs we’ll get back about three in the morning and then we’ll have to travel back on Thursday so we’ll stay down.

“We’ll be training at a club, we’ve been rejected by a few clubs. Spurs rejected us to train down there, we’ve been rejected by a few. Crystal Palace said we could train so I’m really happy about that.”

Spurs Web Opinion

Perhaps Tottenham could have made a nice gesture to Woodgate and Keane by allowing Middlesbrough to train at Hotspur Way as the facilities are certainly big enough to accommodate them. Regardless, Spurs simply cannot afford to be knocked out of the competition on Tuesday as the FA Cup is the club’s most realistic chance of winning a trophy this season.

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