Spurs shouldn’t be punished for ‘impossible’ fixtures logjam – Mourinho

JOSE MOURINHO said Tottenham Hotspur “cannot be punished” with more fixture postponements as he called on the Premier League to show leadership amid mounting coronavirus concerns.

Tottenham’s match against Aston Villa on Wednesday is in doubt after an outbreak at the Midlands side, but Mourinho said his club “refuses” to endure a fixture pile-up similar to their chaotic start to this season.

Tottenham’s meeting with Fulham was postponed last month, and they will also have to rearrange their second league game against Fulham in April because of the Carabao Cup final.

“I believe that it’s a completely impossible situation for a club to have three matches postponed, especially if that club plays in Europe,” Mourinho said.

“The only thing we can say is that what we did in the beginning of the season is impossible to repeat and we refuse to repeat.

“We have to defend our players, the integrity of our competition, and we would never accept to play seven games in three weeks like before. It is the moment for the Premier League to show leadership and make decisions.

Punished

“Decisions where, of course, for a club like us that is trying everything, every day to be ready to play, to follow the rules that we had in our hands since the beginning of the competition.

“We cannot be punished. If we don’t play against Aston Villa, we will have three matches postponed and that’s impossible because after the season we will have the Euros and the Euros will not be moved.”

Mourinho added that Premier League clubs had been preparing for “extreme situations” since the start of the season, saying that Petr Cech, Chelsea’s technical and performance adviser, was registered to play for them in case Covid-19 ruled out their usual goalkeepers.

“Since pre-season we knew that eventually it would happen to us to have difficult situations to manage and to play a game with 14 players,” Mourinho said.

“I think every club was mentally ready for it. Every club was mentally ready for an extremely difficult situation of having lots of players not available to play.

“In our case we did not have that extreme situation yet, but we have had problems.

“Problems that, with the legal right that we have, we managed to hide it in the way of not telling who was positive.

“But we always thought we would always be playing. I cannot say much more than that.” (© Daily Telegraph, London)