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Saints Suspect "Dirty Tricks" Ahead Of Swansea Game

Saints are suspicious of why they suddenly had their hotel reservation in Swansea mysteriously cancelled ahead of the vital game in South Wales.

Saints had made a reservation at the Marriott Hotel in Swansea for Monday evening last month and had booked 40 rooms, this is the only hotel in the Swansea vicinity that is equipped to take a Premier league team.

However club secretary Ros Wheeler received a phone call from the hotel on Sunday saying the reservation was being cancelled due to a "Virus"

The club asked if they could send a representative to the hotel to check out for themselves if they would still be happy to stay, but where told this would not be possible.

Smelling a rat they delved deeper and subsequently found that the hotel was still taking bookings from members of the public but on again speaking to the hotel they again found that the hotel was refusing to honour the booking.

A Saints source told the Daily Mail.

"As far as we are concerned, there is no proof that there is a problem with the hotel. It is open and taking bookings."

"This has caused Mark Hughes and the team a huge inconvenience and we can only think that someone somewhere wants to make life as difficult as possible for us ahead of this game."

"We would have happily sent our own staff to the hotel to see if everything was OK but we were told this is not possible"

"We have had no option but to book the team into the nearest suitable hotel, which is 35 miles away down the M4."

'Mark Hughes is furious about this. It's a huge game with everything hinging on it. The least Mark and the players deserve is a level playing field."

Hughes is reported to be furious that he and his players will have to leave the Vale of Glamorgan – coincidentally used as a training base by Swansea's Welsh rivals Cardiff City – at 4.45pm in order to make sure they reach the stadium in plenty of time for kick-off, normally they would leave at around 6.15pm.

Whilst there is no suggestion that Swansea City themselves have any hand in this, it certainly seems that a senior member of the management staff at the Marriott is a Swansea fan and has decided to tray and do his bit to help the Swans win the game.

The Daily Mail made their own enquiries and indeed found that the hotel made no mention to prospective guests about any problems with the hotel and where happy to take bookings for Monday evening.

Hotel General manager Michael Downie told the Daily Mail.

'As a matter of guest privacy it would be inappropriate to comment on specific reservations.'

Certainly it seems likely that Saints will take it up with the Marriott group and hopefully rather than disrupting the team's preparations it will act as a spur and make them more determined to go to Swansea and take all three points that would be a big leap towards safety.


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