The Premier League have now confirmed that our home game with Crystal Palace will now kick off on December 20th, with kick-off at 8pm thanks to our very good friends at Sky Sports.
This has of course caused a few problems for fans who had already booked transport and accommodation, not just our fans from outside Leeds, but also away fans who were planning to come up from South London. And quite a few have taken to social media to vent their frustration about the lack of consideration for match-going supporters.
A typical comment is "What about fans who now have to try and get home at 11:00 pm on the Saturday before Christmas?” And a few other disgruntled fans announced they will adopt the ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ principle, and will watch the game on Sky at home or in their local pub, rather than travel to Elland Road.
The game had originally been switched to Sunday because of Palace’s involvement in the Conference League, which takes place on Thursdays. Which then meant it would be televised by Sky, as their current contract allows them to broadcast any match that doesn’t start at 3pm on a Saturday.
The fun started when Palace reached the quarter-finals of the Carabou Cup, which clashed with the Conference League fixture, and had to be moved to the following week. But they didn’t want to play that game on Christmas Eve (the Wednesday) out of consideration for their staff, so that tie (against Arsenal) will be played on Tuesday the 23rd.
Which caused another problem, as they didn’t want to play only two days after a Premier League game, so Palace and Arsenal requested that their games be moved back to the Saturday they were scheduled on when the fixtures first came out. And as we move into the pantomime season, their fairy godmother at the Premier League has now granted their wish.
A statement said "Player welfare is a priority for the Premier League, and we have therefore granted requests from Arsenal and Crystal Palace to move their respective fixtures. This comes after the scheduling of matches from other competitions around Premier League fixtures without adequate player recovery time”.
"This is also further evidence of the impact the expanded UEFA competitions have on the domestic fixture calendar. The league would like to thank Leeds United and Everton for their co-operation in accommodating these changes.” Although no mention of Sky’s role in causing further inconvenience to the fans.
Once the game was given to Sky (on the basis it would have been a 2pm Sunday game) then it had to stay with Sky. And on the Saturday the game had to be moved to 8pm as all the other broadcast slots earlier in the day were already taken. We could note that Leeds United would have lost money if the game was no longer televised, as 25% of the TV money is split according to the number of live games each club has, as the ‘facility fee’.
And despite the inconvenience for fans, it’s possible that Leeds will benefit from the move back to Saturday, as it will shorten the time that Palace have to recover from their Thursday night game. That said, they are only playing Finnish club KuPS, and as they are likely to have qualified for the next stage of the Conference League by then, they might be able to rest some key players as they prepare to face little old us.
Personally, I would go back to the days of having all the European competitions as a two-legged knock out in all the rounds before the final, which would stop all this palaver. But I doubt that’s going to happen any time soon.