29-12-2021, 10:14 AM
Brekkie post_id=60554 time= user_id=976 Wrote:Obviously next year the World Cup messes things up anyway but presumably when Christmas Eve falls on a Saturday there isnt usually a fixture list then. Common sense would be for the games to be scheduled on the 26th/27th, 29th/30th and 1st/2nd, trying to keep the same teams to the second day of the schedule.
Boxing Day falling on a Monday is always the most complicated, because it also means there's a full fixture list on New Year's Eve for the only time because it's a Saturday, and the challenge has always been fitting in another round with all the teams playing on Monday and Saturday.
It's happened four times before in the Premier League era. In 1994 it was the last time that teams played consecutive days with matches on both 26th and 27th. Many matches were moved from the latter to the 28th but Spurs, Palace and Norwich all played two days running. Indeed The Knowledge on the Guardian website mentioned this the other day as Norwich were sitting pretty in the top half of the table but then lost both of those matches heavily and never seemed to recover and were eventually relegated.
In 2005 there was a full fixture list on Wednesday 29th. This wasn't very good, though, because as it wasn't a Bank Holiday they all had to be evening kick-offs and the fixtures hadn't been scheduled very sympathetically, with Newcastle fans having to go to Charlton, which was then called off a few hours before kick-off because of a frozen pitch. The other problem with that was that because every team was also playing on Monday and Saturday, there was no opportunity to move any of them to another day so they all kicked off at the same time and Sky could only show one game. I know the more fixtures that kick off at the same time the better, but it was no good from a TV perspective.
In 2011 the additional round was the week before Christmas, the midweek starting 20th December. I thought this was quite a good idea because it meant it could be spread over three days, with Chelsea vs Spurs on Thursday 22nd, with no knock-on effect because nobody was playing again until the Monday. But it meant fans having to travel to evening kick-offs the week before Christmas which again was seemingly considered a major inconvenience. So the last time the days fell like that, in 2016, that whole round wasn't played at Christmas at all and they had an additional midweek round in April, I think. But the problem is, of course, you have to squeeze it in somewhere, because you lose an entire weekend round when Christmas Eve is a Saturday.
Of course in previous years when the days have fallen like they have this year, there would usually be another round of fixtures on Monday 3rd January, with teams playing twice in three days again. But I don't envy the Premier League in having to schedule these rounds, because from a club's perspective it would be better for them to all play today, but from a fans' perspective it would be better if they all played yesterday because it was a Bank Holiday and they could be 3pm kick-offs, rather than having to go to evening games during Christmas week. We hear plenty about how fans are disenfranchised and when they schedule matches at times that are most convenient for fans, it then becomes inconvenient for the clubs.
