Leyton Orient chairman Nigel Travis has said that the club have had discussions regarding rescheduling their Carabao Cup third round fixture against Tottenham Hotspur.
Spurs were set to travel to Brisbane Road for the game yesterday evening but the match was cancelled following an outbreak of coronavirus cases at Orient.
According to The Evening Standard, rules state that a club must forfeit the tie if they cannot play the game due to positive cases.
The winner of the tie was set to face Chelsea or Brighton in the fourth round next Tuesday, meaning there is not much wiggle room for the fixture to be rescheduled.
However, Travis insisted that the League Two side were ready to field a team on Tuesday despite a spate of positive tests and asked the EFL to consider rescheduling the game given how big a boost the additional TV revenue can provide the club.
The O’s chairman told the Evening Standard: “I’m not saying the EFL have to bend the rules. We were available to play, we had a team ready to play.
“But because of the aura of coronavirus, shall we say, there was a feeling the game shouldn’t be played.
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“The first time we were actually notified by Public Health England in writing was about three hours ago.
“All we’re asking is flexibility. The rules are one thing and common sense is another. You only have to imagine in a hurricane or power failure, the game would’ve been postponed and replayed.
“The loss to Leyton Orient this year is an additional £1.5m due to coronavirus, give or take, and this was an opportunity to fill that gap because of the [TV] money from Sky [Sports] and the advertising we sold.
“We feel that you have to take into account circumstances and that’s the argument we’ve pushed forward.
“We think they need to show some flexibility on some pretty draconian rules. We don’t know where we got the coronavirus but we truly don’t believe it’s our own fault. We followed all the procedures.”
Travis also insisted that the club had identified a date when the fixture could be played, despite the congested fixture schedule that the Lilywhites have over the next few weeks.
He added: “I’m not going to say but we carried out a deep analysis. Two different people worked on it yesterday. That took into account Orient’s fixtures, Spurs’ fixtures, European commitments and international breaks.”
Spurs Web Opinion
The only way the fixture can be rescheduled is if the fourth round tie is also pushed back to a later date. Given that both Spurs and Chelsea also have midweek matches for the foreseeable future, I do not see when this game can be played.
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