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We can't be surprised by the Premier League's ugly soccer around the holidays
Because New Year's Day fell on a Sunday, January 2 was also a holiday this year. And that proved great for the Premier League, who treated us to six matches.
It was perfect -- a free holiday and hours upon hours of the Premier League. Except for one problem: the soccer was largely awful.
Nobody questioned why things were so ragged either. All but two of the teams in action played on Saturday, too. That left them a single day of rest at the tail end of a stretch that saw every team in the league play three times in roughly a week.
By the end of Leicester/Middlesbrough, both teams looked like they were happy to stand in place until the final whistle. And that was only a slight drop off from the rest of the match. Pep Guardiola didn't even bother criticizing his team for minimal running, even before Fernandinho's red card. Late tackles were the norm across the league as players were constantly behind the play.
Managers across the league have hit out at the fixture pile up and rightly so. Beyond the fact that the quality of play was poor and the impact that these unnatural matches will have on the title race, Champions League fight and relegation chances, it also leaves players at greater risk for injury. Tired players are more susceptible to injury, a problem for anyone who cares that these are human beings, but also to the owners who don't want to risk their very expensive investment.
“I don’t know who does the fixtures but he needs sacking really," Crystal Palace manager Sam Allardyce said.
Allardyce's criticism was aimed as much as the unfair advantages some teams get -- having two days off against a team with one day off -- but even so, it's tough to blame this on any one person.
The Premier League gets all that TV money because they're willing to satisfy their partners. That means playing constantly around the holidays and that's what they did. They also have to find time for their 38-match season with so many teams in Europe, international dates and two domestic cups. The other top leagues only have to make time for one other cup. Then there's us, the viewing public, who eat up all these matches and are happy to watch for our soccer fill when the rest of the world takes a break.
The schedule-maker can't fix all those things. Unless they can get amendments to their TV contracts, eliminate a domestic cup and get fans to be OK with a soccer-less world for two weeks, there are going to be holiday matches and they're probably going to be absurdly condensed.
Basically, we need the league and everyone involved in the game to recognize that the quality is poor and the players are in danger. Then, more than that, to care enough to do something about it. And they have to do it in the face of traditional opposition because Boxing Day, New Year's and constant soccer are part of the Premier League's DNA.
It's not easy to make a change and a change probably won't happen, but at least we can't be surprised when the soccer is sloppy.
