The Premier League has the hardest schedule of any league, and the Champions League Round of 16 showed it firsthand. I blame the league itself not the UCL. Other leagues don’t have this problem: look at Villarreal they got kicked out of the Champions League and are still third in La Liga. Same in Serie A, Bundesliga, or Ligue 1.
Arsenal and Liverpool will probably advance, Man City now have a real dilemma: they have to choose what to chase making a comeback against Real Madrid in the Champions League or trying to keep up in the Premier League title race. With this schedule, a realistic title race is almost impossible btw.
The battle for Champions League spots is ridiculously tight, and the league is so stacked that there aren’t any teams you can rotate against with a second squad. Something needs to change. There’s barely any time to rest. Meanwhile, Bayern Munich or PSG can rotate almost their entire squad in more than half of their domestic league games. From a European competition perspective, it already looks unfair.
Also PSG were given an easier schedule to prepare for a big Champions League tie? The French league actually moved a domestic fixture to give PSG extra full days of rest before their UCL clash with Chelsea, allowing them multiple five‑plus day rest periods between legs.
Imagine if the English FA/PL did that: moving an EPL match so Manchester City or Arsenal could rest before a Champions League game it’d be chaos.
by nick_defiler
25 Comments
They have more money. The harder schedule is an equalizer. And I say that as a fan of a PL team. I want Europe to stay competitive and not become a competition between PL teams, which is slowly what it is becoming
It’s not about the schedule. Most leagues have the same number of teams
It’s about the level of competition
PSG can win most of their Ligue Un games in third gear. They don’t need to bring their A game, or A team every week
Same with Barcelona, Madrid, Bayern, etc. Yes, they have competitive league games, but not like the Premier League
In the Premier League the middling sides are a genuine threat every week. Have a bad day and even the whipping boys of the league will hurt you.
Forest 17th, probably going down- have won at the champions, drawn at Man City, drawn at home to Arsenal.
The big shock of La Liga has been Barcelona posing to Girona in 15th.
Suffering from success, Premier League is so strong that the teams like Man City, Liverpool, Arsenal etc cannot play with their 2nd string against the bottom half of the table. Unlike Bayern, PSG and to some extent Spanish trio.
Yeah, no I don’t think the FA/PL should prioritise the better teams by postponing their weekend fixtures especially when it’s without any permission given or agreement made from both those teams and their opponents.
If these teams were so adamant on wanting to postpone those games then maybe they or the FA/PL should be offering their opponents compensation to do it, I’m sure some teams would accept it if given £10-20m
In fact this postponing games without the permission of the opposition should be something that should be banned from being allowed to happen in the other leagues (by FIFA or UEFA).
There are just too many games. Too many cups and non league games. Then you stack on international players. It’s too much for players in every league. We’re seeing injuries from constant wear and tear on players’ bodies. This isn’t just an issue an PL
Overreacting to a couple of nights of results again I see. It’s not like they lost to minnows.
City spent £2billion building a squad with world class players as back up to the first team so they can cope with these games and now they only need to sign players to replace players that leave 2 or 3 a season is enough. All built in breach of the FFP and PSR to give them an unfair advantage. Their current squad cost them £1bn compared to Arsenals costing £820+million. Thats about 20% more which is a big difference.
Jesus Christ I love the premier league but the way we treat it like it’s special is ridiculous.
Everyone is acting surprised Real Madrid, PSG dominated and Bayer matched the league leaders. These are great sides, we don’t deserve to just steamroll everyone because ‘it’s the prem’
I think it’s as others have said, the quality of all the teams in the league is much, much higher than the other leagues bar 1 or 2 teams
I’ll happily allow and invite teams in European competitions to rotate against us, especially Newcastle
So why is it this year and only this round is a problem?
How about all the previous years where plenty of teams went far?
Man we just got outplayed as a whole, we didnt win, just accept it as it is. It’s clear if our clubs won, this topic wouldn’t have been brought up.
Edit: im not saying you’re wrong though, the average competition in the pl is much higher, but its difficult to bring this up now just after this match week
Sure but that’s part of the cost of becoming the wealthiest and most watched league in the world. Can’t have it all.
Man city have to forget UCL
That wall of text kills me
Come on, all the European teams play roughly the same amount of games in a season. It is the English media and English fans that are delusional and think they have the best teams and talents.
Walcott was saying that Real Madrid would finish 8th in the PL, remember?
Ligue 1 routinely moves PSGs games to Fridays if they have an important CL game in midweek (or sometimes Saturday). They have done so for years, this is not news.
This is just part of it.
You weren’t moaning when your insane squad depth took you to a treble?
The Premier League is often regarded as the strongest league in the world, it’s a privilege to play in it. Stop looking at it as a negative.
Everyone is well aware how easy especially Bayern and PSG have it week in week out, but their domestic wins are mostly utterly meaningless so it goes both ways.
How exactly do other leagues give their players more rest? La Liga and Seria A are both 20 team leagues. Germany and France have 18 team leagues, so 4 less games.
Italian and Spanish temas have the same number of league games. So what us the problem with the PL schedule?
If you check how many games each team in the CL has played this season – across all leagues, and all competitions – then generally speaking they all come in at around 40-45 games each so far. The German teams a bit less though I think thanks to their winter break. The outlier is Bodo Glimt for obvious reasons.
I’ll come back to how competitive the Premier League is – there’s no other top league in Europe that can match that. It’s not the schedule or number of games, it’s that each game is a lot harder. The rest of it is money – if teams don’t want to be playing on stupid days or times, then they need to think a lot harder about taking the money from the TV companies don’t they?
It is such an overreaction to one set of results, especially off the back of dominating the group stage.
Newcastle: underdogs vs Barca, nearly won, draw is fine.
Arsenal: away from home, a draw is ok.
Liverpool: a one goal loss against Galatasaray can be turned around.
Chelsea: Bad result, but against a tough PSG team. Most expected them to lose, but 5-2 was worse than expected.
Man City: terrible result, I don’t think anyone expected that which shows it was probably a one-off.
Tottenham: are Tottenham, what did you expect?
Barça lost against Real Madrid, Girona rank 14, Sevilla rank 15, real Sociedad rank 8.
In LaLiga they play same amount of games. They play a game every 3 games. Real Madrid got 8 important players injured and they beat city hard🤣. Barça got 3 important injuries and have no squad depth.
You pl turds are just little cry babies when it matters.
Most Champions League: La Liga 🇪🇸 (20)
Most Europa League: La Liga 🇪🇸 (14)
Most Club World Cup winners: La Liga(8) 🇪🇸
Most UEFA Supercup winners: La Liga 🇪🇸(17)
Most Ballon D’ors: La Liga 🇪🇸 (24)
Most Golden Boy awards: La Liga 🇪🇸
H2h with PL 🇪🇸
Biggest mouths PL 🏴
Groupstage d’or 🏴
Cya😂
Should teams that qualify for European football be given an option to opt out of the league Cup?
If this was in place I do wonder if clubs would do this given the fact that they will make more from the TV appearance than actually winning the trophy.
Lol someone here yesterday said the papers would run this narrative after yesterday’s result. Lazy reporting.
Also people who are saying other leagues got more rest is a lie.
Valverde played most minutes.
Chelsea had 11 days off between 10 February and 21 februari. They only played Hull City in between. Chelsea rotated hard with a B squad. After 21 february Chelsea had 8 days off. This means they had more time off then Barça and Real Madrid lol
Arsenal had 7 days off between 22 February and 1 march
I can go on for every club. Just take your loss and zipp it🤐🤐🤐