Tottenham release angry statement after Arsenal match postponed

Tottenham officials reacted angrily to the news that their match with Arsenal was being postponed

Tomorrow’s (Sunday, January 15) North London derby between Tottenham and Arsenal was called off earlier today, after the Premier League approved a request from the Gunners to postpone the fixture. Mikel Arteta’s side claimed to have up to 13 senior squad players missing.

Arsenal currently have a number of their players participating in the Africa Cup of Nations, others are out with injuries, some suspended, but reportedly, they only have Martin Odegaard self-isolating with Covid.

A pretty angry statement has since been released this evening by Tottenham, which read, “We are extremely surprised that this application has been approved. We ourselves were disqualified from the European Conference League after a significant number of Covid cases meant we needed to reschedule a fixture, and our application to move our Leicester fixture was not approved – only for it to be subsequently postponed when Leicester applied”.

It continued, “The original intention of the guidance – here – was to deal with player availability directly affected by Covid cases, resulting in depleted squads that when taken together with injuries would result in the club being unable to field a team”.

“We do not believe it was the intent to deal with player availability unrelated to Covid. We may now be seeing the unintended consequences of this rule. It is important to have clarity and consistency on the application of the rule. Yet again fans have seen their plans disrupted at unacceptably short notice”.

“We shall once again send food deliveries to the local food banks to avoid unacceptable waste. We are sincerely sorry for our fans – some of whom will have travelled great distances”, it concluded.

Tottenham’s Eric Dier made his thoughts clear when he tweeted a gif of a confused face, while Sky Sports football pundit, and ex-England star, Gary Neville was adamant that the match should have gone ahead regardless.

Neville tweeted, “Game off. What started out as postponements due to a pandemic has now become about clubs not having their best team. The Premier League must stop this now, draw a line in the sand and say all games go ahead unless you have an exceptional amount of CV cases. It’s wrong”, as reported by thesun.co.uk.

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