Tottenham manager Antonio Conte expressed his surprise at the north London derby being called off last weekend as he labelled the Premier League’s decision ‘strange’.

Top-flight officials accepted the Gunners request to postpone the tantalising showdown at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium

Sportsmail exclusively revealed a day earlier that the depleted Gunners had filed an application for the clash with bitter rivals Spurs to be cancelled.

They had at least a dozen players unavailable because of positive Covid cases, injuries, suspension and international duty at the Africa Cup of Nations.

And the Premier League accepted Arsenal’s request on Saturday, with Spurs left furious as a result.

Conte, speaking ahead of Spurs’ rearranged clash with Leicester on Wednesday night, said: ‘I think the club made a statement and they showed our disappointment at the decision. It was a strange decision.

‘I must admit that this is the first time in my life that a league postponed games due to injuries. I’m very surprised.

‘My feeling is that when there is the situation to play you have to play. Normally to postpone games is due to international duty.

‘We have a big problem to solve that is Covid, but only in this situation. For other situations, honestly this is my first time in my life.’

The Premier League announced the postponement on Saturday afternoon, apologising to fans and stressing it aims to cause as little disruption as possible while keeping fans informed of developments.

Tottenham reacted angrily to the decision, which they described as ‘extremely surprising’.

The Spurs statement 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 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. It is important to have clarity and consistency on the application of the rule.

‘Yet again fans have seen their plans disrupted at unacceptably short notice.’

The rules state that clubs are required to fulfil Premier League fixtures provided they have 13 outfield players and one goalkeeper who are either part of the senior squad or ‘appropriately experienced Under-21s.’

But Mikel Arteta’s squad is so depleted they couldn’t even muster that number of players for one of their biggest games of the season.

Thomas Partey, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Mohamed Elneny and Nicolas Pepe are away in Cameroon for the ongoing AFCON competition.

Granit Xhaka was suspended after his red card against Liverpool in the Carabao Cup semi-final on Thursday night.

Martin Odegaard was the one known Covid case at the club while Calum Chambers, Cedric Soares, Kieran Tierney, Takehiro Tomiyasu, Emile Smith Rowe and Bukayo Saka were all injury doubts.

The quantity of injury doubts raised suspicion at Tottenham and it also didn’t go unnoticed that Arsenal let Ainsley Maitland-Niles and Folarin Balogun leave on loan in recent days.

Arsenal’s Under 23s were also in action on Friday night, drawing 1-1 with West Ham, with a potential argument some of those players could have been called into the senior squad by Arteta.

On Spurs’ Europa League Conference appeal, Conte added on Tuesday: ‘Until now there is a decision that they dropped us. I repeat it was because the Premier League didn’t want to move the game against Leicester.

‘Leicester then asked to move the game and they did. I think it was a big damage to Tottenham from the Premier League. You have to try to protect your team in Europe. Instead they analysed us in a bad way.

‘We are working, we have passion for football and we like to do this but they need to show us respect.

‘Now I don’t know [about the appeal], it’s for the club not me. I know there is a decision now.’