Tis the season for complaining and pre-emptive excuse making for dropping points.
Or at least it is on the official Manchester United website, as they published a post entitled “Fixture Congestion for Jose’s Reds” that outlined the excessive workload all teams face this time of year, but took a “woe is us” stance.
The ManUtd.com “article” maintains the position that Old Trafford will have a rougher go of it this holiday season than the other teams, and while they do have some valid points, this endeavor reeks of poor sportsmanship and has been therefore widely mocked on social media.
United manager Jose Mourinho is known for his mind games in press conferences, and one of his favorite tactics is excuse making before the fact. He likes to under promise and over deliver, and if he fails in doing so, provide a reason for failure ahead of time. The post has a theme that kind of reflects this type of tactic.
our research shows that Manchester United have a harder time of it than our rivals towards the top of the table.
Jose Mourinho’s side have a total of six non-matchdays over the period – no club has fewer – while London trio Arsenal, Tottenham and West Ham United can boast three more, due to the Gunners’ clash with Liverpool being brought forward to this Friday and the Spurs versus West Ham derby moving back to 4 January.
Chelsea’s matches are nicely spaced out to give them a total of eight days between games, while Liverpool and Manchester City have seven. The reigning champions have three days between their second and third games, unlike the one to be experienced by United and 14 other Premier League sides. A short trip to Arsenal on 3 January gives the Blues and the Gunners a little more grace.
To be fair, they are far from the only club to be complaining about this. Chelsea manager Antonio Conte has repeatedly fixated on this in press conferences throughout the season, to the point that Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp called him out for it.
In doing so, Klopp himself brought up the scheduling quirks that went against his side and his team’s interests.
The bottom line is this- everyone has to deal with this, and it’s a direct result of the broadcast rights holders obtaining more and more power. It’s the holidays, and thus more people are home to watch sporting events, and hence the TV networks will televise more sports and stagger out the starts in order to try and have something live in as many windows as possible.
This goes in the interests of the broadcast rights holders and against the interests of team personnel.
However, it’s a problem for every sport all across the world, not just Manchester United. It’s true that all sports are just made for TV these days, and adverse consequences naturally follow. Complaining about that won’t change anything.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune company’s blogging community Chicago Now.
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