Tottenham has reacted with fury to the postponement of Sunday’s north London derby, saying they are ‘extremely surprised’ the PL approved Arsenal’s request.
A strongly-worded statement issued on Saturday night accused the Premier League of not applying their own rules consistently when it came to match postponements related to Covid absences.
Spurs pointed out that they were disqualified from the UEFA Europa Conference League when a large number of Covid cases forced them to reschedule their final group fixture.
They also criticized the Premier League for not accepting their application to postpone the match with Leicester but then subsequently calling it off when Leicester applied.
Arsenal are without at least a dozen players because of injuries, suspension and international duty at the Africa Cup of Nations.
But there is only one known positive Covid case in their squad – midfielder Martin Odegaard.
The Spurs statement 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”.
‘The original intention of the guidance 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 traveled great distances.’