Spurs complaint over strike duo pursuit

10:25pm Friday 18th July 2008

Tottenham have lodged an official complaint to the Premier League over the conduct of Manchester United and Liverpool in their pursuit of Dimitar Berbatov and Robbie Keane.

Sir Alex Ferguson has confirmed United have made a bid for Berbatov and eventually expects the deal to go through.

Spurs have also been angered by the comments of Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez, who went public last week by revealing the Republic of Ireland captain as a target.

Spurs chairman Daniel Levy on Friday night issued the following statement on the club's official website, www.tottenhamhotspur.com: "Today's public comments by Manchester United's manager, announcing that he has made an offer for Dimitar and is confident that the deal will go through with time working in their favour, is a blatant example of sheer arrogance and interference with one of our players.

"It is also probably one of the worst offences by any manager in the Premier League to date and is unbelievably hypocritical given his recent comments in respect of Cristiano Ronaldo and Real Madrid.

"This comes after a series of events, dating back to last summer, which have shown Manchester United to be in breach of Premier League rules.

"As a result, we have made an official complaint to the Premier League about the conduct of Manchester United.

"Benitez made similar comments in respect of Robbie recently and we made an official complaint to the Premier League about the conduct of Liverpool earlier this week.

"The behaviour of both clubs has been disgraceful. We told both clubs very early on that we had no interest in selling Robbie or Dimitar, respectively, and that they should refrain from pursuing the player.

"Both clubs arrogantly chose to ignore this request and we now have evidence that both clubs have systematically been working to prise the players away from us, outside of Premier League rules of conduct."

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