The Premier League season has been thrown into disarray by the postponement of 22 games due to Covid and injury — but it was not always so easy to get a match called off.
JERMAINE JENASIn the dressing room when Tottenham lost 2-1 at West Ham on the last day of the 2005-06 season to hand a Champions League place to Arsenal. Ten Spurs players went down with food poisoning on the morning of the game.
Jermaine Jenas was part of a Tottenham side chasing Champions League football in 2006
‘It was a scene of pure chaos. The lads were in absolute turmoil. On the morning of the game most of our players were in a very bad place.
‘Michael Carrick was one of the worst. Michael Dawson was bad too. Had it been in the middle of the season, something could have been done. But it was the last day when all the games had to kick off at the same time.
‘That was the hurdle the club ran into. It was, “Get on the coach and go and play”.
‘It was not a pretty journey — one in and one out of the toilet all the way and others slumped, exhausted, against the windows. We always knew we were going to struggle.
‘Afterwards I was sitting in a dressing room with a group of players who had had a fantastic season and been undone by food poisoning.
‘It was the worst dressing room moment I have ever had. A whole season’s work was gone.’ As told to cbssports.com.
But the Spurs stars were struck by illness on the final day of the season in defeat at West Ham
Played for non-League Wimbledon in their incredible 69-game 1974-75 season. They won the Southern League and London Senior Cup and became the first non-League team to knock a top-flight side out of the FA Cup away from home in 55 years when they won 1-0 at Burnley.
‘Talk of modern-day fixture congestion makes me laugh. That season was chaos — we played 33 times between February 1 and the end of the season and had a squad of about 16 players.
‘We played 11 games in March and 12 in April. You don’t have to be a maths genius to work out that’s a game every two-and-a-half days and that was often on bad pitches in terrible conditions.
‘We actually asked if we could opt out of the London Senior Cup to try to ease the load and were told no! So we got on with it. The thing about footballers is that they just want to play, really.
‘That’s what makes the situation in the Premier League so ridiculous.
‘It’s not the players who want games postponed, it’s the coaches. Managers at the moment are just seeking an advantage and that is wrong.
‘In the 1970s games did get called off because of the weather, especially in non-League. That’s what happened to us. The games just piled up.’
Dave Basset is pictured with Wimbledon's stars in 1985 during his managerial days
Took a full strength Luton team to play a benefit game four days before the biggest match in the club’s history. They had to win at relegation rivals Manchester City on the last day of the 1982-83 season to stay up — and they did.
‘We were having a bad end to the season. We lost 5-1 at home to Everton on the Saturday and then 3-0 at Manchester United on the Monday.
‘On the Tuesday we had agreed to play a testimonial at Watford. We could have pulled out — we certainly had the excuse — but we had made a commitment to Graham Taylor and his
