diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index d233f5e4311c..d5a1c63b3a54 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ jsonschema
 tweepy
 click
 spacy>=3.0.0,<4.0.0
-en_core_web_sm @ https://github.com/explosion/spacy-models/releases/download/en_core_web_sm-3.4.0/en_core_web_sm-3.4.0-py3-none-any.whl
+en-core-web-sm @ https://github.com/explosion/spacy-models/releases/download/en_core_web_sm-3.5.0/en_core_web_sm-3.5.0-py3-none-any.whl
 
 ##Dev
 coverage
diff --git a/scripts/check_requirements.py b/scripts/check_requirements.py
index e4eab024a628..3323697b5946 100644
--- a/scripts/check_requirements.py
+++ b/scripts/check_requirements.py
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
+import re
 import sys
 
 import pkg_resources
@@ -16,7 +17,7 @@ def main():
     for package in required_packages:
         if not package:  # Skip empty lines
             continue
-        package_name = package.strip().split("==")[0]
+        package_name = re.split("[<>=@ ]+", package.strip())[0]
         if package_name.lower() not in installed_packages:
             missing_packages.append(package_name)