Football fans love a petition
The postponement of today’s (Sunday 16th) North London Derby at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium has seen football fans divided.
The growing number of Premier League games being called off due to Covid cases has led to scepticism around how badly teams are actually suffering from a lack of available players, with accusations of teams stretching the new rules to their limits for their own benefit.
With numerous Premier League stars playing at the Africa Cup of Nations, as well as the usual suspensions and injuries, it is not just Covid-19 that is causing headaches for managers right now.
But the late postponement of Tottenham’s clash with Arsenal has caused quite a stir, with the Gunners only suffering from one case of Covid-19.
Indeed, Spurs conveyed their anger at the decision to grant Arsenal’s request on Saturday in a statement that read: “We are extremely surprised that this application has been approved.
“We ourselves were disqualified from the European Conference League after a significant number of COVID cases meant we needed to reschedule a fixture and our application to move our Leicester fixture was not approved – only for it to be subsequently postponed when Leicester applied.
“The original intention of the guidance – here – 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.”
And one Spurs fan in particular has channelled their anger one step further, launching a petition to investigate the decision to call the game off.
Kim Pullen, creator of the petition, wrote: “I want a full investigation into the decision on London derby postponement shown to football fans of all teams as I believe this was not due to covid.
“I want proof of Arsenal players covid positive, the team had access to players from a large squad (U21/U18) to play the game.
“These postponements need to stop. The staff members and others now not being paid has a long lasting affect in these difficult times.
“If postponement must happen the asking team should lose the game and pay any loss of earnings to other team staff, fans etc etc. There should be full disclosure in all games postponed due to covid including previous and future games.”
At the time of writing, more than 300 people have signed the online petition.
It is not clear who they want to do the investigating, though. The Premier League is not a separate entity to the clubs who comprise it. Decisions like this are made across the league with every club having a say.
It has reached a point, though, where many believe the clubs have made a rod for their own back by allowing so many games to be called off. Something will need to change soon if they want to finish this season before next season begins.
