TOTTENHAM HAVE CONFIRMED that their Premier League meeting with Manchester City at the end of October and all three of their home Champions League group games will be played at Wembley.
The club announced in August that they had been forced to delay the move into their new stadium at White Hart Lane until at least late October due to “issues with the critical safety systems”, after initially targeting 15 September.
At the time of that announcement, Spurs remained hopeful of being able to face City at their new home on 28 October, but any chance of that has now been dashed — the game being confirmed for England’s national stadium a day later due to a clash with an NFL fixture between the Philadelphia Eagles and Jacksonville Jaguars.
Spurs insist that there is still a possibility the stadium could be ready for 29 October, but they decided to go down the Wembley route “in the interest of clarity and certainty” as they will not know about White Hart Lane’s status until much closer to the date.
They have also taken a similar decision for their home games in the Champions League group stage to played at Wembley, after being drawn with Inter, PSV and Barcelona.
Their final home group stage game will take place against Inter on 28 November.
Chairman Daniel Levy said: “We are all focused on ensuring contractors deliver our new stadium in the shortest possible period of time and opening our stadium at the earliest opportunity. The consequences of not being able to open our new stadium on 15 September against Liverpool have been immense. Building a venue of this scale that is open to the general public is a huge undertaking. We are creating, in Tottenham, a unique world class stadium with pioneering technology and engineering.
“Amongst the consequences of the delay have been substantial additional costs, not least of which the need for alternative venue hire, along with the inconvenience for our fans and those of our opposition.
“I want to apologise once again and thank you all for your support, many of you have taken the time to write to us and commend what we are doing for the Club. When you face times like this in an organisation it’s teamwork and pulling together that gets you through.
“Our dedicated staff are having to manage operations again at more than one stadium and I want to thank them for their resilience. Mauricio, his staff and the players, have been exceptional in their support and fully embraced the changes of venue with total positivity. They have my utmost respect.
“We are now being regularly updated on progress and as soon as we have confidence in our project managers’ and contractors’ ability to deliver against the revised schedule of works, we shall be able to issue dates for test events and the official opening game.
“We are facing many issues, but although disappointing, costly and frustrating, I am uncompromising in my determination to deliver something extraordinary to our fans.”
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