Mikel Arteta sarcastically thanked the Premier League for the way they’ve scheduled Arsenal matches and claimed it’s not fair that his side twice follows Wednesday night matches with games early on Saturday.
While the Spaniard maintains that his players will be up for this weekend’s clash with Aston Villa, he’s less than impressed that being selected for broadcast by BT Sport mean he’ll have less than three days to prepare following tonight’s 2-0 defeat to Liverpool.
He also hit out at the way the scenario repeats itself in April when matches with Chelsea and Manchester United are also separated by fewer than 72 hours.
“Thank you so much to the Premier League to do that,” said Arteta.
“And they’ve done it again when we have to play Chelsea and Manchester United. So if they want to give them any advantage, I say to them today: ‘Thank you so much for doing that’.
“Don’t worry the players on Saturday they will be there, with energy. They will eat, sleep well, but thank you so much to the Premier League for putting the fixtures like this. Very, very helpful.”
Asked if the club has complained to the Premier League, he went on: “Yes, absolutely, because it is not fair. It is not fair what they have done.
“It is always it’s BT, it’s Sky, it is this, it’s that. But the one that is affected is Arsenal and the only thing that I care [about] and we care [about] is Arsenal. And for Arsenal it is not fair.”
While we understand Arteta’s annoyance (and suspect it’s driven by the fact we lost this evening) we have to point out that plenty of sides play Champions League football on a Wednesday before tackling Saturday fixtures. It’s not unusual.
Moreover, while Manchester United do have an extra 24 hours to prepare for their trip to the Emirates (they face Liverpool on Tuesday 19th April), Chelsea have 24 hours less to prepare for their game with us because they travel to Leeds on the Sunday when we face Southampton on the Saturday.
It’s swings and roundabouts and at this time of year. We just need to get on with it.
Thank you so much to the Premier League.
so, so much
As you say, swings and roundabouts and probably things balance over time, but there is no harm in having a wee moan of it helps foster the us against them mentality in the squad
I don’t mind the moan but saying “it’s not fair!” makes it sound very wimpish. If we were in Europe we’d have this every week
and the swings will never ever favor us. Thank you so much to the premier league.
It’s always worth a moan! If we let things slip by unnoticed they’ll begin to take advantage of that.
Yep, definitely worth a moan. Even a winning manager like Jurgen Klopp means all the time.
Yesterday they should have 4 yellow cards and he was still complaining.
Thiago tackled Partey to the knee.
Matip grabbed Lacazette from the shirt.
Fabinho kicked Martinelli from behind to stop counter.
Conclusion. Arsenal is a dirty team.
Arteta can’t moan we have played the majority 1 game a week
True. I thought it was more but I did some quick maths and we’ve played 34 games in 216 days, which works out to a game every 6.35 days.
These maths do not apply to human body recovery times which should be counted o. daily basis.
Fx if you work for 3 weeks straight 12 hours and you rest for 1 week straight are you fully rested?
On average yes. In reality no.
UCL teams have deeper squads and more money to maintain them so they are not a counter argument
guess the two thumbs down to your valid point were from Bobby and Nainsley
Three nights sleep is plenty of recovery
He isn’t lamenting the game being on Saturday but the early kickoff. Last season Klopp also spoke out about it when they had noon kickoffs after Wednesday Champions League games. The additional couple of hours apparently helps a lot with the recovery schedule.
Precisely right. It may seem trivial to those of us who have never been where these players are in terms of fitness, but there have been enough complaints from enough different camps about those few hours difference that I have to believe it really does matter for these guys. Even in my poor man’s version of an exercise regimen, I can tell a significant difference between a morning and an evening workout on Thursday when my previous workout was on Tuesday evening, for example.
Teams with Champions League football also receive CHL money to maintain bigger squads.
It’s not the Premier League though is it; it’s BT and SKY who get assigned the broadcast time slot and then choose which fixture they wish to show.
Keep remembering how bad we played with early kickoff during the later years of the Wenger area.
Oh Blogs, why do you have to be so sensible?
Let us moan and soak in the misery
I like how some of these so called journalists are saying well we called off many games and that’s the reason. If they did their job as journalists they would know we only cancelled one and have had more games cancelled due to our opponents than ourselves
Might be a contrarian opinion, but in this case I think Arteta doth protest too much. We’re not playing in Europe or FA cup, so we should be ok physically. Leicester had a Thursday game before playing us on Sunday, these things happen sometimes.
Well, I look at it this way.
If every other manager out there can have a moan about fixture congestion, then so can Arteta.
And I think he’s spot on here; BT and Sky are a bunch of mercenary cunts whose only thought is making money. They couldn’t give a shit about the clubs and how they operate professionally.
We’re talking recovery periods for world class athletes here; not the fucking Nags Head Peckham playing three games in seven days.