Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville has called for the Premier League to reject Arsenal's request to postpone Sunday’s North London derby.
Meanwhile, Jamie Carragher slammed Premier League sides of taking advantage of football's current Covid-19 crisis as he urged clubs to hand younger players opportunities.
Arsenal became the latest club to request a postponement on Friday after they submitted a request to call off Sunday’s crunch north London derby.
Arsenal have made a request to postpone Sunday's north London derby against Tottenham
Mikel Arteta's (pictured) Gunners played Liverpool away in the cup on Thursday night
Arsenal currently have one known Covid case - Martin Odegaard - and Granit Xhaka is suspended following his red card against Liverpool on Thursday.
However, Calum Chambers, Cédric Soares, Kieran Tierney, Takehiro Tomiyasu, Emile Smith Rowe and Bukayo Saka are all injury doubts for the game - an issue that has raised obvious suspicion at Tottenham.
Mikel Arteta is also without Arsenal’s Africa Cup of Nations contingent: Thomas Partey, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Mohamed Elneny and Nicolas Pepe.
Granit Xhaka (right) will miss the derby after receiving a red card for a challenge on Diogo Jota
The former players insisted that it was not a direct 'dig' at the Gunners but did urge clubs to stop the requests.
'I honestly believe that all teams, not just in the Premier League but in the EFL now, must be made to play their fixtures,' Neville told Sky Sports.
'Balogun has gone out on loan, Maitland-Niles has gone on loan, Xhaka has got a red card, that’s not the fault of anybody else. We can’t be calling fixtures off.'
The former Manchester United defender claimed that top-flights were using Covid-19 outbreaks as an excuse to avoid fulfilling fixtures they believe they will not win.
