With just over a week until the start of the 2020/21 Premier League season, Tottenham knew they already had a busy September without being rebuffed in their attempts to have one particular fixture switched.
In amongst the English top-flight matches, Jose Mourinho’s side will kick off their Europa League campaign against Bulgarian side, Lokomotiv Plovdiv.
According to the Daily Star, they had asked for the match to be played in London, but Plovdiv owner, Hristo Krucharski, refused the request, meaning that the north Londoners have a trip to Bulgaria in between the visit of Everton to White Hart Lane and a trip to Southampton.
Not to mention another Europa League away trip to either Botosani from Romania or Macedonia’s Shkendija, should they dispose of Plovdiv.
Krucharski’s side will go all out to ensure that won’t happen and he had no sympathy at all for the Premier League side.
“There was an offer from Tottenham to play there. But I told them quickly that we don’t play for money but for pleasure,” he said in quotes published by the Daily Star.
“We are Bulgarians. We have the chance to host this match here and the match will be played on Bulgarian soil.
“The miracle is clear. That we will beat them. We will beat them. The question is by how much.
“Now everyone will start saying I am crazy, a simpleton. But this is Bulgaria. Everything happens with patience.
“If we don’t believe we can beat Tottenham, we’d better dig ourselves a grave and wait to die. We can defeat them! We’ve got 16,000 bottles to celebrate!”
With such congestion coming so quickly after the end of the 2019/20 season where all of the final 10 fixtures were condensed into a few weeks, the chances of injury are high.
How well Tottenham fare in this first month will arguably author their season for the rest of this year at least.