The Premier League have confirmed that the North London Derby between Tottenham and Arsenal at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium will take place on Thursday, May 12 at 7.45pm.
The original fixture was supposed to take place in January, but had to be called off after the Gunners applied to have it postponed due to absences related to COVID-19, injuries, and the African Cup of Nations in their camp. "We are disappointed to announce that Sunday’s north London derby at Tottenham Hotspur has been postponed," read a statement on the club's official website.
"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."
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Spurs are understood to have been furious at the decision and released a statement of their own claiming they were "extremely surprised" at the cancellation. “We are extremely surprised that this application has been approved,” it read. “We ourselves were disqualified from the European Conference League after a significant number of Covid cases meant we needed to reschedule a fixture [against Rennes] and our application to move our Leicester fixture [on 16 December] 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.”
The rearranged fixture will now see the fierce rivals going head to head in their third-to-last games of the Premier League season as they battle it out to secure a Champions League spot. Tottenham will at home three days later to Burnley in a game that is set to be rescheduled from Saturday, May 14, to Sunday, May 15 at 12:00.
Arsenal meanwhile are now set to face a long trip up to Newcastle on Monday May 16th in a game that was originally scheduled to take place on Saturday, May 14. Manager Mikel Arteta has previously stated his frustration at the quick fixture turnarounds that the Premier League have imposed upon his side between matches against Liverpool and Aston Villa and Chelsea in Manchester United. In both of these cases Arsenal play in the lunchtime kick off on Saturday having played in the evening on a Wednesday.
“Thank you so much to the Premier League to do that," he said of the league's fixture scheduling. “And they’ve done it again when we have to play Chelsea and Manchester United. So if they want to give them any advantage, I say to them today: ‘Thank you so much for doing that’."
This garnered little sympathy from Spurs boss Antonio Conte though. “I only want Arteta to remember the game postponed. Tottenham – Arsenal okay?" the Italian said. "If we speak about unfair. I stop.
“In general, I think my answer is enough. Okay, yeah, it’s enough. If someone wants to speak about fair or unfair. We postponed the game, Tottenham-Arsenal, if you remember. I don’t. I don’t forget this, and I think that it’s not right to speak about fair or unfair.”
