Next Tuesday West Ham plays West Bromwich Albion at home which comes 48 hours after the Baggies home game with Arsenal on New Year’s Eve. West Ham, on the other hand, will have had a full week of rest since the away trip to Bournemouth on Boxing day.
The extra rest comes courtesy of the Hammers fixture with Spurs originally scheduled for this weekend has been moved from New Year’s Eve to Thursday, January 4, because of safety concerns of the lack of public transport.
At the time, the league said: “Following discussions with the clubs involved, and Sky Sports, a decision was taken to seek an alternative date that would allow far more fans to attend the match.”
It was deemed to be fair because both West Ham and Spurs would have the same amount of time to prepare for the game. But that has left the two teams playing those sides on Tuesday, January 2, at an unfair disadvantage, and they happen to be the two sides at the bottom of the table, West Brom and Swansea.
Albion has declined to comment on the issue but their board are known to be seething behind closed doors, and the club have made the Premier League aware of their strong feelings on the matter.
The Premier League released a statement to say:
“The Premier League is a national competition and the scheduling of fixtures is complex.It includes having to ensure twinned clubs do not play at home at the same time, and take into account police requests, local events, broadcasting selections and several other factors.
“Over recent years, FIFA and UEFA have taken more dates from the football calendar, restricting the opportunities in which to schedule 38 Premier League match rounds.
“With the World Cup squad call-ups commencing in May 2018, these restrictions are tightened further this season with an early conclusion to domestic competition.
“These challenges were highlighted to all of our clubs ahead of the season, and all understood that there could be no perfect solution which would meet all clubs’ individual preferences.
“With reference to the scheduling of our New Year’s Eve fixtures, a late decision by public service providers ensured one match would no longer be able to go ahead as originally planned.
“As the fixture had already been selected for live UK broadcast, it was moved to the next available date, which is in line with normal practice.”
We failed to beat bottom three teams Newcastle and Bournemouth. We’ll need every bit of luck to beat another bottom three team WBA. We could have done with those three games after we had made a few signings. Desperate times that I hoped were behind us.