I note that Jurgen Klopp had a go at BT today on air, regarding their scheduling
A fascinating interview between Jurgen Klopp and @TheDesKelly discussing Liverpool's draw with Brighton, the Reds' injuries and fixture schedule. pic.twitter.com/s0BhahlUsP
They both have reasonable points - it's not much recovery time between games, but also the rules agreed by the clubs allow the broadcaster to make that pick.
He's just a whiney little loser. If their players can't cope being paid hundreds of thousands a week to sometimes play twice in that period then they should sack them.
He's just a whiney little loser. If their players can't cope being paid hundreds of thousands a week to sometimes play twice in that period then they should sack them.
The face that they're paid a good amount of money doesn't change how tough it is to run 10km or so twice in the space of a few days, especially considering how much Liverpool press.
Agreed there, but the clubs and league have, albeit in extraordinary circumstances, agreed to a timetable within current broadcasting criteria. Any additional matches being peripheral to the 2019-2022 deal. Klopp, Liverpool and others need to examine the restart plan they agreed within the Premier League structures and not challenge contractors as Klopp did today.
Thing is, when the fixtures are released at the start of the season, they are all 15:00 Saturday kickoffs... the broadcasters then work out afterwards what goes where in their schedules. So technically their game was only moved 2.5 hours away from its normal slot. So would he have whined the same if it was played at 3pm? Of course he would have, but he’d have blamed something else...
:-(
A former member
They made £170m in prize money last year, meanwhile 20 miles away in Wigan they were crowdfunding 200k to continue existing.
My heart doesn’t exactly bleed over playing two games a week.
Especially when you look at how hard our doctors and nurses and teachers are having to work at the moment.
Arguably it's Sky's fault rather than BT anyway for not picking it for a Sunday slot. Tricky to work out esp. with the extra games but I'd say it was 3rd choice at best this weekend.
The package BT have has 20 second picks and 12 fifth picks. Like other packages it has a maximum number of picks per team at six (a minimum of 1).
Sky's two packages which have their first picks can only pick Liverpool eleven times.
Thus, most weeks BT have at least the opportunity of picking Liverpool, but can only do so a few times. Sky will keep most of their first picks for Liverpool for later in the second half of the season, in case the league is tight, and so they can show the winning games then. Thus BT will want to get at least a reasonable portion of the likes of Liverpool before the run-in, and hence have picked them a few times already in that package.
Only two of those picks have followed a Wednesday match (per MOTD last night) - and remember now with the Champions League on consecutive weeks that one week a side plays Wednesday, the next Tuesday, and vice versa, and clubs such as Liverpool don't want to play Sunday if they are playing a European game on the Tuesday. If Liverpool don't want to play on the earlier Saturday kick-off times, and won't play on the Sunday, that doesn't leave any choice of timings at all. At this point, the domestic TV fixtures are decided before the champions league draw, and effectively saying that all four clubs in the Champions League can only play the Saturday evening fixtures doesn't work
This season is exceptionally difficult - an already tight schedule is even tighter due to the late start - but there are no answers to the issues raised, and so complaining about them is whistling in the wind.
Covid19 claims it's first Premier League postponement of the season.
Following a Premier League Board meeting today, Newcastle United’s fixture at Aston Villa, due to be played at 20:00 GMT Friday 4 December, has been postponed