North London derby postponed
Much to the disgust and outrage of many, Arsenal’s trip up the seven sisters road to take on local rivals Tottenham was postponed after Arsenal’s request was accepted by the Premier League, despite minimal COVID-19 cases.
? Our match against Tottenham on Sunday, January 16 has been postponed. #TOTARS
— Arsenal (@Arsenal) January 15, 2022
An official statement from Arsenal claimed:
“We know how much this match means to our fans around the world, but the Premier League has made the decision to postpone the match, due to many players across our squad currently being unavailable as a result of COVID-19, existing and recent injuries, in addition to players away with their countries at AFCON.”
However, non-Arsenal fans were unhappy, most of all Tottenham, who argued that:
“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.”
Club statement.
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) January 15, 2022
So, with just one registered COVID-19 case, why was the game postponed?
Explanation for postponement provided
In short, the match was postponed because Arsenal could not meet the minimum requirements of 13 outfield players and a goalkeeper due to injury, but there is a COVID related logic behind it.
According to Miguel Delaney, Arsenal argued that previous COVID cases in the squad (which has seen several players go down with illness while not leaving the Gunners short) meant that they were forced to overplay other players, which led to injuries to those players which otherwise may not have happened.
Arsenal only have two cases – but the case the PL specialists agreed with was their squad was pushed to brink over busy Xmas period, that had 11 cases. So the view is that had injuries they would not have had in non-Covid timeshttps://t.co/vx1oGxWmdt
— Miguel Delaney (@MiguelDelaney) January 16, 2022
And while this argument is tenuous at best, given that the other 19 clubs in the top flight have all tried to have games postponed for similar, it is no surprise that Arsenal tried.
