I missed this, and can't see that its been covered here, so apologies if it has, but Spurs are out of it. We withdrew 2 days after beating Pool. No specific reason other than a rule breakage. Not sure if that means an ineligible player, but rumours on another site say a clerical/admin error. http://www.tottenhamhotspur.com/spurs/News/media-statement-030212.page?
This was discussed when it happened Notso, but there's been no light shed on what the problem was, as far as I know. The rumour I heard was that we played 2 underage players, bizarrely. No idea if that's accurate, though.
There were 2 ineligible players used. One was the substitute Bentaleb, and I have no idea who the other was. The club have been particuarly keen to close the matter once they had admitted guilt, so it remains unclear which member of staff was at fault here. The guy who would normally oversee this matter, Darren Eales, was in court as support to Harry, so it is generally reckoned to be the person standing in for him who made the administartive oversight. It must have been a huge disappointment for the under 19 squad, as they had done so well to get this far in the competition, and had also played some damn good stuff in the other games, most notably the 7-1 stuffing of Inter Milan, which still remains one of the most imprseeive displays I have seen from a Tottenham side for some considerable time.
Cheers for that guys , I only had a quick scan to see if it had been discussed before....obviously not a very good one! I was going to use initials to reply to you Spurcat...better not! . Massive disappointment as you say. Aswell as we had played previously though, the Pool game was a bit of a mare I thought.
It was on the Nextgen thread at the time, Notso. It's obviously disappointing as we were doing well but hopefully we will enter our academy in next season's tournament(has this been annonced?) because most of the players from this season's campaign will be eligible again. Edit: Removed crap joke due to it being a photo of them womens team
So someone just made an administrative error then and the players were of the right age to play? Disappointing.
In the case of Bentaleb, he was both under age and he hadn't been registered for the competition. It was because of his blatant ineligibility that the club realiosed there was no way we could have got away with it, that they immediately informed the NextGen people and withdrew from the competition.
Isn't he 17, SC? I'm not surprised that he wasn't registered though, as it appears that we've only signed him properly today.
No, it's a **** up. It happened to West Ham when Redknapp was there too, strangely enough. Manny Omoyinmi came on as an 113th minute substitute in a League Cup quarter-final against Villa. He touched the ball twice, it went to penalties and the bitter Essex mob thought that they'd gone through, after winning the shoot out. It was revealed two days later that the dopey future-flop had already played in the competition, while on loan at Gillingham earlier in the season. The game was replayed and Villa won it in extra time. Villa went on to lose the next game to Leicester, who beat Tranmere in the final.
