Antonio Conte has revealed that Tottenham had a request to postpone their Premier League match against Leicester rejected, with the Premier League keen for the game to go ahead to avoid a backlog of fixtures.
Spurs have been dealing with an outbreak of COVID throughout the team this month, which forced part of the club’s Hotspur Way training centre to be closed.
Conte confirmed a total of eight first-team players and five coaching staff tested positive last week, which subsequently caused the postponement of the club’s last two games against Rennes and Brighton.
However, the situation appears to be improving with players slowly returning to training upon the completion of their isolation periods.
Although there is an expectation Thursday’s trip to Leicester will go ahead, Conte revealed the club sent a request to the Premier League to get the meeting against the Foxes called off, but saw their appeal rejected by the board to prevent a fixture pile-up.
In a press conference, he said (via Football.London): “The Premier League did not want to postpone the game against Leicester. Maybe because we have to play Burnley and Brighton and had postponed two games before.”
Meanwhile, Leicester have been forced to deal with COVID problems of their own this month, alongside a host of injury issues.
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Foxes boss Brendan Rodgers also admitted his side requested to have Thursday’s encounter called off, but were met with a similar response.
Spurs Web Opinion
It appears as if the game will go ahead barring another surge of cases, but some players are starting to come back to training now. It isn’t shocking that the Premier League denied the postponement request given Spurs have to fit the Burnley and Brighton games in at some point too.
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