Wright mocks Neville after Man Utd legend tells PL to reject Arsenal request

The Gunners filed an official request to the league on Friday for the north London derby to be called off this Sunday.

The club said that they had a lack of available players due to Covid, injuries and squad members being away on Africa Cup of Nations duty.

A decision on whether the game will go ahead is set to be made on Saturday, with the Premier League’s new Covid-19 guidelines stating clubs must play a game if they can field 13 outfield players.

Arsenal are only known to have one Covid case with Martin Odegaard, while Granit Xhaka is suspended and Folarin Balogun and Ainsley Maitland-Niles have gone out on loan in the January transfer window.

But former United full-back Neville has expressed his view that all sides should be made to play their matches and thinks Arsenal’s request should be turned down.

‘Balogun has gone out on loan, Maitland-Niles has gone on loan, Xhaka has got a red card, that’s not the fault of anybody else. We can’t be calling fixtures off.’ 

‘If it was purely down to Covid in extraordinary circumstances and there were 10 or 15 players out,’ he added. 

‘But we’re now talking about teams for the last few weeks where there’s no doubt they’ve been calling games off based on whether they think they’ve got the best squad or team to win a game. It’s got to stop.

‘And I have to say that’s not a dig at Arsenal. I should have spoken three or four weeks ago. Manchester United, other teams, have got 30 or 40 players in their squad, I’m not having that they can’t get 14, 15, 16 players together. 

‘And so for me it should be rejected. Without knowing the exact detail, unless there’s an absolute load of Covid cases come in today at Arsenal, I feel having played last night at Liverpool and played fantastically well by the way, it has to stop now. They have to make teams play.’