Arsenal have requested that their trip to north London rivals Tottenham be postponed after a number of absences within the squad, and it has finally been confirmed by the Athletic, but Gary Neville is fed up.
The Christmas period saw a raft of matches called off at the last minute, in the Premier League as well as in the lower leagues, and there has appeared to be a lack of consistency in regards to to whether requests have been accepted to postpone.
This weekend marks the first time that our club has asked for a match not to go ahead as scheduled however, with Mikel Arteta continually insisting that he wishes to play our games when possible, but that hasn’t stopped us from having matches delayed thus far regardless due to opposing team’s requests.
Watch Mikel Arteta’s Press Conference ahead of Tottenham – “We want to play”
Gary Neville has had enough of all the postponements however, and has called for the FA to take a stand and force matches to go ahead regardless of any absences.
🗣 "I honestly believe that all teams must be made to play their fixtures"
🗣 "We're talking about teams calling games off based on if they think they have their best squad… it's got to stop"@GNev2 and @Carra23 share their thoughts on recent postponements 💬 pic.twitter.com/6qBsmLOjyM
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) January 14, 2022
Admittedly, we certainly do appear to have shot ourselves in the foot by allowing Maitland-Niles to leave on loan without a replacement, knowing that both Elneny and Partey were playing at the AFCON and would be unavailable, and Granit Xhaka’s red card only moved to exacerbate the situation.
The worst thing is we now have no game to watch this weekend! Grrrrr….
Patrick
Very fortunate to get it postponed but it obviously does us a big favour and we have to take it and beat spuds to prove it was worth it, when we play them.
Get over it Neville and spurs.
On this day in 1999 we signed Kanuuuuuuuuuu.
Top player Declan
Good times
Premier League Board met today and regrettably agreed to postpone the club’s away fixture against Tottenham Hotspur, due to be played at 4:30pm on Sunday 16.
COVID MY ARSE. THIS IS PURE CORRUPTION BETWEEN ARSENAL AND THE FA
Shut up you fool, it’s the 20th game to be affected during the Covid nightmare, now you run along you silly little person. All teams have benefited through not playing. Spurs, Liverpool,Chelsea and Man Utd
How many Covid cases do we have from our main 12/13 players?
How many Covid cases do we have from our main 12/13 players?
wolves v. arsenal was postponed for similar reason. same with everton v. leicester. Yes, Arsenal, Wolves, and Leicester. the notorious trio of FA favorites 😂
Just because it’s Arsenal, that makes it different does it? Jurgen Clopp is allowed to admit a mistakenly postponed game with “mistakes happen” comments. How many other clubs have submitted detailed covid details for each player missing? It appears that everything has to be taken on trust – unless its Arsenal!
Lol EVERYONE gave Liverpool a hard time about their postponement so not sure what trust you are talking about
Not happy about any games getting postponed.
Out of any team going for top 4 I guess we can afford the postponement the most but if we lose that game we’ll never hear the end of it.
Rather we played Spurs who are not very good at the moment, and with the hapless Xhaka suspended, I believe we would have beaten Spurs. I do believe we have enough quality to field a strong team
apparently other players picked up knocks after liverpool. saka among them. no way we would’ve won. we would have to dip into u-23 squad who just played a game yesterday too.
After all the sickening, (no pun intended), comments from various pundits and Antonio conte with an anti-Arsenal agenda, at last there’s one in the eye for Conte. The postponement was the only possible action, and I, ahem, expect similar criticism from them when other clubs also apply for postponement of fixtures. This, however, really ought to be the last one sanctioned. EPL clubs have large first team squads and they should be fully used.
more good news, Marseille have a transfer ban for two windows. So they likely wont be able to activate the option to buy Gunedouzi for a low price. Chance we can generate more funds from his sale now instead of the very low price Marseille had the option to purchase him for. Marseille can still appeal tho so nothing certain yet
Any existing deals can go ahead, it would only be new transfers and they are appealing as well.
Exactly reggie, the same happened qith Kovicic to chelsea
Whatever the rights and wrongs of it the genie is now out of the bottle Gaz, the Premier League can’t change their approach now with so many fixtures already postponed and numerous Clubs affected
It is what it is
I fail to understand ANY right thinking Gooner who is sorry this game is postponed. That is wonderful, though not surprising, news for us and gives us a massively better chance to win this vital game, than compared to had we played it tomorrow, with a much depleted squad.
If you TRULY love our club, rather than your own Sunday entertainment, it is GOOD NEWS!
Absolutely correct…cannot understand any Arsenal fan wanting to play this game tomorrow with our current players available !
All those saying we should play are likely the same constantly moaning.
This is the Premier League’s fault…we are playing by their rules.
Also if Ghana lose their next match we get Partey back early !
Onwards!!!
its baffling Jon
Baffling, surprising, but very welcome news!!!
Hey Ken- I read an interesting article on how Arsenal put forward their case to the EPL.
It’s not just the COVID issue and the fact t we have Partey. Elneney, Pepe and Aubamayang absent at AFCON, it’s the injured players we have. Both Tommy and ESR are nursing injuries and Saka pulled up at Anfield too. I believe the club stressed that by being forced to put out these players might just be too soon and as we all know rushing a player back is never a good idea (Partey at the Spuds last season springs to mind). Also, players such as Odegard may we’ll be negative in a few weeks, but as with Gabriel last before, they need time to recover properly.
So in my opinion the club were right in focusing on the long term issues as it’s not all about this one game at all.
The fa t we have only the League to concentrate on plus (hopefully) two Carabao cup matches should benefit Arteta as we will not have any European distractions.
This of course means there can be no excuses. Spuds, United and everyone else have games to catch up with so we will have less excuses for not challenging for Fourth place.
All true Gooners should be delighted, as I am, that despite the bleating of Conte and others, this game has been postponed. Facing Spurs with a such a severely weakened team would have been madness of the first order.
The hysterics surrounding our game getting postponed from rival fans and the media is laughable. Most other teams have done the exact same thing albeit each club for different reasons. The problem is the rules which the Premier league are responsible for. We apply the ‘if you can’t beat them join them’ principle and now there is an outcry. You can bet if it was the other way round spurs would do exactly the same thing!
Excellent news.
Pool paved way for this to happen so why not us too?
Saliba and Guendouzi definitely coming back from Marseille at the end of the season as they have been hit with a two window transfer ban.
It only involve new deals, so any deal to buy in place already can go ahead. Plus they are appealing and hope it will be overturned.
Well Saliba is definitely coming back anyway but if Guendouzi doesn’t, it’s no loss.
I can only hope this postponement doesn’t make us look like “cheaters”!?!
Really!!!!
Actually it isn’t signed yet the deal was at end of season and was an option not an automatic one so there is a chance that he will have to return to the arsenal team.
Exactly how I wanna put it
I’d rather be watching the game tomorrow so I am disappointed that it has been postponed but I understand why it has
FF then you plainly care more about yourself and your own boring Sunday than you do for the club you CLAIM to support. REAL FANS know we are massively benefiitted by the game being postponed. But you do not. So what is the obvious conclusion of those sentences I wonder. Or rather ,I don’t!!
Yes, I’d rather be watching my team play than not, win lose or draw, simple really, but as I say I understand why it has been postponed
By the way, why do you get so angry about very little on your posts and feel the need to be rude
It’s quite funny but also a little bit sad that you get so worked up over nothing, what difference does it make to you whether I would rather watch an under strength Arsenal team play or not
But if you support a team that is used to winning trophies, and lots of them, merely taking part is not the issue. I want my team to WIN every time they take the field, and if that means postponing a fixture until we are able to field a strong line up, then so be it. Some people call this a ‘winning mentality’.
I didn’t say I didn’t want to watch Arsenal win, of course I do, I’m just disappointed at events because I was looking forward to watching the game
We were already under strength because we had 4 players at AFCON and 1 suspended so even without injuries we were not as strong as we could be but with COVID tests I understand why it was postponed
We might have won with an under strength team anyway and by the time the fixture is played we might lose whatever the strength of our team
They would have had Son missing today and he could be back for when we play them now, in my opinion he is a greater threat than Kane at the moment so I think it works both ways
Exactly FF, Not even Mystic Meg knows what the result today would have been and the result when it is played will be. Football is not an exact science, we wouldn’t have had xhaka today, how do these sayers know xhaka wont play give two penalties away and get sent off anyway in the first ten minutes. They don’t and we dont know what today means and we dont know what state we will be in when we do play them.
Actually m8 all hes saying is he wanted to watch arsenal on TV but he understands the need for the postponement. He’s not saying what your suggesting he is at all.
Fifa rules state that if you can field a team of 7 players or more the fixture should be fulfilled. But if a player gets sent off or injured the game has to be abandoned which is pointless tbh. So in essence every club who has applied for a postponement has broken the rules. And we were the 20th team before the pundits open their over opinionated gobs the should be pointing their fingers at the FA not Arsenal
Yes. No more postponements. After this weekend of course!!
🙂
This issue can be put to bed by simply having a rule that every club has to utilise their entire First-team playing squad. If you have to field several inexperienced kids, or perhaps even a goalkeeper as a makeshift outfield player, so be it.