Arsenal and Tottenham will battle it out for the final spot in the top four this weekend and the north Londoners have a long history of last-day dramas.
But nothing is more infamous than Spurs’ Lasagna-gate in 2006.
Getty
It was a traumatic 24 hours for Tottenham’s Class of 2006
Incredibly, there were fears it could happen again at Tottenham with big club Gary Lineker posting on social media on Friday: “Learning there is an outbreak of food poisoning at Spurs. No, I’m not kidding.
It sparked feelings of deja vu among Spurs supporters before Antonio Conte acted to allay those fears during his press conference on Friday ahead of the final day game against Norwich.
While Conte confirmed there had been an illness in the camp, he insisted he had a fully fit squad to choose from and that Harry Kane would be fit to play with Spurs only needing only one point at Carrow Road to beat Arsenal to fourth place.
It may have been 16 years ago but memories would have flooded back among the Tottenham faithful about the infamous Lasagna-gate episode.
Arsenal profited at the expense of their near neighbors in dramatic fashion in 2006 when the Premier League ignored calls for a postponement.
Not even ten senior players feeling violently ill after food poisoning from questionable lasagna could convince the top flight to postpone Tottenham’s final day clash with West Ham, despite Champions League qualification on the line .
Getty
Arsenal and Spurs are battling for fourth place this season
A win over West Ham at Upton Park on the final day of the 2005/06 season would have secured fourth place for Spurs, but the task was made much more difficult…
“We had 10 players sick overnight,” manager Martin Jol said after the game. “We asked to postpone the match for 24 hours but we didn’t want to risk sanctions.”
Former Spurs captain Michael Dawson, one of several key players forced to play through illness, recalled the incident on talkSPORT.
He said: “Saturday night we went to a hotel in Canary Wharf and WOW, late Saturday night and early Sunday morning I was hard on five or six other players.
“Back then it wasn’t like today when you’re in a hotel before every game and it wasn’t even an early kick-off.
Getty
Spurs were walking injured that day
“I remember we had our evening meal, I went back to my room and I think around 10/11 o’clock I was like ‘wow, I feel hard!’ I phoned the woman to tell her I hadn’t slept, then an hour later I called her back and I’m really, really sick, sick.
“I thought, ‘I’m going to have trouble playing the next day.’ both fell and I was like, ‘I’m fighting, I don’t know how I’m going to play.
“I remember saying that I didn’t think I would be the only person to get sick. I went for a walk in the morning and felt washed clean, drained. I wasn’t the only one, there were five or six of us really struggling.
AFP
Jermain Defoe canceled Carl Fletcher’s opener
AFP
But a strike from Yossi Benayoun in the second half wins the match
“The police came to the hotel. It’s a major thing because the Champions League was on the line and all of a sudden six or seven of us are losing.
“They said they could delay the game for an hour but I thought it would take me about three days to recover from that!”
The clash in east London went as normal and Dawson started but Spurs didn’t get the result they needed as they lost 2-1.
The defeat was made worse by the fact that Arsenal lifted Spurs to fourth with a home win against Wigan.
Getty
And Tottenham’s Champions League hopes went up in smoke
Getty
Maybe the team would have done the job if they weren’t sick
“We came in and we didn’t play and I was one of them that had a game nightmare,” Dawson added.
“There were players coming in that morning who hadn’t been involved all season – you better have played them because we had no energy. I remember Michael Carrick coming out at the start of the second half and being completely washed out.
“It was devastating. Anyone can lose a game, we may have lost the game, we’ll never know, but not being on equal footing was hard to accept.
