Premier League Schedule Falls Under Criticism

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Following the eighth round of fixtures in the English Premier League, Leicester City lead the way with Tottenham Hotspur in second place, Liverpool third, and Southampton in fourth.

It has been an extremely busy start to the 2020/21 season for Premier League clubs also involved in European competition and that was brought to a head this weekend.

Having played in the Champions League on Wednesday night in Istanbul, Manchester United were forced to play Everton away from home at 12:30 on Saturday in the Premier League. This drew criticism from Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, despite the fact his team secured a crucial 3 points against the Toffees.

Speaking after the match, the Norwegian said, “The kick-off time set us up to fail”, before continuing, “We have been to Turkey, played loads of games this season already, we got back Thursday morning and we are playing Saturday lunchtime, it's an absolute shambles.”

It was certainly a quick turnaround from the match in Turkey and Manchester United arrived back in Manchester at 4am Thursday morning. Solskjaer was keen to point out that it was not only his team who was suffering from the schedule and both Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp spoke about the matter following the 1-1 draw between Manchester City and Liverpool.

Liverpool lost right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold to a calf injury in the second half of the match. He will miss the international matches with England having withdrawn from the squad. The first half of the match was played with high intensity but there was an obvious drop off in performance in the second half of the game. This raised the issue of having five substitutes available in a match.

Speaking after the game, Klopp said, “I spoke to the Premier League already and spoke to Pep before the game about the five substitutions. Everyone watching is like: 'Oh, that's interesting.' But we have to change things and help the players.”

Guardiola joined in by saying, “All the other clubs and countries play five substitutions because they understood that the situation is completely unusual in terms of the pandemic.

"No break, no rest and everyone is at home. All the other countries do it, but here it looks like it likes to be special, different.

"That is not good because we don't protect the players and we should do it."

However, not every manager in the Premier League is keen on bringing five substitutions into play. Dean Smith saw his Aston Villa team produce an excellent performance in their 3-0 win at Arsenal on Sunday night, with the Gunners having been in action in the Europa League on Thursday evening.

Speaking about the five substitutions rule, Smith said, “I can sympathise with teams in Europe but there's some big squads out there and I've made my feelings known from the off that I thought we were right to stay with the three-subs rule.”

This is a debate that is going to continue following the international break, especially if players return fatigued or injured. Could we be about to see a clean break between the teams playing in Europe and those competing only in domestic competitions in England?

With the European Super League being discussed again recently, it is an interesting time in the Premier League and the future of the competition could be on the line.