Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta revealed that the North London Derby postponement was for the right reasons. Arteta also said that the club would not question the motives of the opponent’s request to call the game off. Arsenal’s request was granted as they did not have a sufficient number of players due to Covid injuries and players at AFCON.
“We didn’t have the players necessary to have a squad available to compete in a Premier League match,” Mikel Arteta said after the North London Derby was postponed. “That is 100 percent guaranteed. I don’t know if I understand. I’m telling you what we’ve done. If a team has come to us and said, ‘we cannot play and here are the reasons we cannot play, and the game has been postponed, we have never publicly questioned any of that, and we will not.”
“That’s why we have the Premier League, the FA (Football Association), and the regulators to consider, to find out and do the necessary due diligence to postpone a match to try to maintain the fairness of the competition,” he added. “We will defend our club tooth and nail. We’re not going to have anybody damaging our name or trying to lie about things that haven’t occurred. If we make mistakes we will put our hand up, but we will defend our club in a really strong way. When we played the first three games of the season we were killed with people saying, ‘don’t be naive – if you have that many players out, don’t play with your kids.”
