So Daniel Levy will finally realise his dream of having Spurs play in the fabulous Stadium MK after all. Spurs were drawn as the home team vs Watford in the League Cup and have applied to the Football League for special dispensation to play the tie in beautiful Milton Keynes. Here is the skinny from the club website: As a result of both our new stadium and Wembley being unavailable during this week, we have applied to the EFL board for special dispensation to play this tie at Stadium MK. The Club was required to submit its application prior to this evening's draw and the board of the EFL will now consider our request at its next meeting on Thursday 6 September. We appreciate that Stadium MK may not be an ideal destination for every fan to get to on a weekday evening, however the Club felt it would not be beneficial to request a reverse of the fixture as it would have resulted in no more than a 10 per cent allocation of tickets for our supporters at the venue of our opponents. In contrast, we shall have a ticket allocation of up to 90 per cent at a neutral venue, ensuring greater access for our fans. Consideration was given to a number of different football stadia and for a variety of reasons – capacity, availability, facilities, accessibility, pitch quality and clubs still being in the competition themselves – it was simply not possible to secure a neutral venue within the M25. We are extremely conscious of having to ask our supporters to attend home matches at more than one venue and apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. Further details regarding the scheduling of our tie, along with ticketing, will follow in due course.
A stadium that seats 30,000 isn't bad in a pinch. They should make some decent money on ticket sales. Where the hell is this place, anyway? Not too far for the home supporters to travel, I assume.
It's about 50 miles outside north London to the northwest, just off the M1. By American standards, it's not far to travel, at all. By British standards, it's a bit more of an inconvenience. About a half-hour and eight quid round trip by train from Euston (if one buys early), which also isn't bad. How worthy the logistical inconvenience is of a whine is based primarily on one's inclination toward whining. And people, you have no idea how predisposed some season ticket holders are to a mither. My biggest complaint is putting money in the hands of MK Dons, but that's about as inconsequential as any complaint can or will be - Levy won't give a jot about that. To be fair, it's probably as reasonable a solution as there's likely to be. Hopefully it's the only time we have to do it. The 30k number probably means little, as we wouldn't sell 30k tickets for this no matter where we play - and certainly won't in a neutral ground. Unless they charge 5 quid or something, there'll be plenty of empty seats.
The tie has been confirmed by the Football League for Wednesday, September 26th at 8 pm UK time (3 pm ET/12 pm PT) at Stadium MK.