Tottenham Hotspur took a reasonably comfortable 2-0 victory over Leicester City on Saturday evening, but with Barcelona around the corner for the club, manager Mauricio Pochettino was far from happy with the scheduling at the weekend.
Rather than a normal kickoff, the game was bounced to the Sky inspired 7.45pm late slot in the evening and given the travel back to London following the game, and with the travelling we will do in midweek for the Champions League clash, Poch pulled few punches as he stated categorically that the Premier League hadn’t given the club the ‘help we needed’ with such a massive tie on the horizon.
Speaking to the BBC for his post-game press conference after the final whistle, the Argentine explained.
“I am bit surprised the Premier League put us in the position of playing at this time because we travel to Barcelona on Monday and that will be so tough. We didn’t receive the help we needed from the Premier League but we are going to be ready to fight in Barcelona.”
Now in fairness, this isn’t down to the Premier League in some ways – once they sold themselves to the broadcasters for another season with the full permission of member clubs, their fixture list becomes an irrelevance.
So in some ways, the club themselves have to shoulder the blame and you wouldn’t expect Sky to show any sense here as they are covering their profits and won’t care if we are poor on Tuesday because BT have that game.
Poch is, unfortunately, both spot on and wide of the mark.