Antonio Conte has expressed his disappointment at the Premier League for postponing their fixture against Arsenal on Sunday and called on the league to show more respect for the responsibilities of a manager. The Gunners requested the League to postpone the game due to the unavailability of players.

Tottenham were set to host Arsenal at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday as the two rivals were set to battle it out in the race for finishing in a top-four position. But Arsenal made a request to the Premier League to postpone the fixture as they have an insufficient number of players in the squad to feature. That was because several players are missing due to coronavirus, suspension and through injuries with a few missing because of their participation at the African Cup of Nations.

Tottenham were reportedly unhappy at the notion of postponing the game as they believed that the Gunners didn’t have credible evidence of a coronavirus outbreak at the club. The Premier League convened a meeting the next day and made the decision to call off the fixture and postpone the game to a later date. In light of that, Antonio Conte has expressed his disappointment with the decision taken by the league and called for more respect to be shown for his job.

“The club made a statement and I think the club expressed our disappointment about the decision. It was for sure a strange decision. My feeling is that when there is a situation to play, we have to play and not postpone games for injuries or for international duty. It was a big damage to Tottenham from the Premier League. You have to try to protect your team in Europe and they penalized us in a bad way. We are working and we like to do this, but I think they have to show respect for our job,” Conte told reporters in his pre-match press conference.