Mikel Arteta vows to defend Arsenal ‘with teeth and nails’ after postponement criticism

Mikel Arteta says Arsenal will “defend our club with teeth and nails” after they came under fire in the wake of Sunday’s north London derby being postponed.

The game between Arsenal and Tottenham on Sunday was called off as the Gunners did not have 13 first-team, outfield players at their disposal.

The club have, however, come in for criticism for not playing the game by making up numbers from their academy setup.

Arteta insists Arsenal postponed the Tottenham game for “all the right reasons” and he will stand up for the club’s name as it comes under fire.

“We will defend our club with teeth and nails,” he said. "We are not going to get anybody damaging our name, or trying to lie about things that haven’t occurred.

“We will make mistakes, and we will put our hands up, but we will defend our club in a really strong way.

“We know we did the right thing, and we worked together with the Premier League and The FA to make that decision and to explain the reasons why. I think if anything, we have been very, very honest at least.

“We’ve been very consistent. We played against [Nottingham] Forest when we had 10 players out, and we tried to play, and we tried to play the next game and the next game.

“We went to Liverpool and we played and we had many players out for that. We got to a point where we could not make a squad available with the numbers required in this league to play a game. That’s why we did not play, it’s as simple as that.”

Arteta is hopeful tomorrow’s game with Liverpool will go ahead and he confirmed the club have had no more Covid-19 cases.

The Spaniard also pointed out how Arsenal played their opening game of the season against Brentford while battling with an outbreak of the virus.

“When we played the first three games of the season, when other teams were postponing matches, and we played and we tried to play, we were killed,” he said.

“[People said] don’t be naive, if you have that many players out don’t play with your kids. Now we postponed the match for all the right reasons, believe me, and as well you get those reactions. But I think they are normal.

“I am telling you what we’ve done and when a team has come to us and said, ‘We cannot play and these are the reasons we cannot play’ and the game has been postponed, we have never, ever publicly questioned any of that.

“We will not, that’s why we have the Premier League, the FA and the regulators to consider and to find out and do the due diligence necessary, m which is a lot to postpone a match, to maintain the fairness of the competition.”