Spurs Say Sorry After Wenger Sprayed With Champagne

The Tottenham Hotspur sporting director, Damien Comolli, issued an apology to Arsène Wenger in the wake of Tuesday's 5-1 victory over Arsenal after the visiting manager's post-match television interviews were interrupted by a trio of home players bursting into the room and spraying champagne.

Wenger was the innocent victim of what sources at Spurs admitted were "players' high jinks" as Jermain Defoe and two team-mates emerged from the celebrations in the home dressing room and into the White Hart Lane interview area, spraying bubbly as they went.

Defoe and his team-mates are understood to have been intent on drenching the Spurs assistant manager, Gus Poyet, who was being interviewed before Wenger, but had been unaware that the television feed to the screen in the changing room had been on a time delay. Instead, when they burst into the interview room and emptied their bottles they found Wenger, in the right place at the wrong time, standing where Poyet had been.

The Frenchman, who was in between interviews at the time, safely avoided a hefty dry cleaning bill and was not soaked - he went on to attend his briefing with the written press - but the champagne did leave one of the interviewers sodden. For his part, Wenger remained calm but was distinctly unimpressed, with the incident duly prompting Comolli, formerly employed as a scout at Arsenal, to apologize on Tottenham's behalf before the visiting party departed White Hart Lane.

Other members of the Arsenal delegation, including the managing director Keith Edelman, had left the stadium early possibly anticipating traffic problems around the ground. Indeed, while Arsenal were represented in the directors' box until the final whistle, some directors left their seats around the 70-minute mark with Spurs well en route to a first victory over their bitter rivals in 21 attempts.