MIKEL ARTETA has come out with all guns blazing at Arsenal’s critics and vowed to defend his club ‘with teeth and nails.’
The Emirates boss is incensed by the flak he has taken after the postponement of Sunday’s North London derby.
And he insisted the club did everything by the book when they had the game called off despite recording only one positive Covid case.
Angry Spurs issued a statement criticising that decision and hinted that Arsenal had exploited a loophole in the Premier League’s regulations.
But Arteta countered: “We will not allow anybody to damage our name or try to lie about things that haven’t happened.
“We will absolutely defend our club with teeth and nails in a really strong way because we know we did the right thing.
“We didn’t have the players necessary for a squad to compete in a Premier League match. That is 100 per cent guaranteed.
“Whoever is saying that we’ve been trying to do something that we haven’t, that’s a lie. And when somebody is lying you don’t really get offended.
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“We were killed when we played the first three games of the season with a lot of players missing.
“People said ‘don’t be naive. If you have that many out, don’t play with your kids’.
“We played against Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup with ten players out and now we postponed a match for all the right reasons and we get these reactions. It’s a no-win situation.”
Speaking ahead of tonight’s Carabao Cup semi-final second leg against Liverpool at the Emirates, Arteta insisted he is still struggling to name a team.
And he suggested that not every club has been as transparent as Arsenal when it comes to getting games called off.
He said: “When a team has come to us and said they cannot play, we have never, ever publicly questioned any of that.
“You have to expect people to follow the rules, to be honest and try to maintain the integrity of the competition.
“I agree that there should be more clarity about the rules, but you have to do that right from the beginning.
“To ask somebody to change when you want to be transparent halfway through the season is tricky and a little bit manipulative.
“If the game is off only for Covid then we are playing a different game with different rules.
“So then are we testing every day, twice a day, PCR or lateral flows? What are we trying to achieve?
“Because there’s no way we can give all our players a full MRI scan every day because then no-one is going to play football.
“On Sunday we did not have even 11 players available and we did all the right things.
“You have to prove individual evidence, all the MRIs, all the Covid cases you have. You have to put it all on the table, explain and answer more questions.
“That’s why we have the Premier League, the FA and the regulators to carry out the due diligence, which is a lot to postpone a match.
“We have been struggling all week with numbers. Hopefully we can bring some players back against Liverpool but they won’t be in the best condition because they haven’t trained for a long time.”
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
