Mikel Arteta hopes Arsenal’s game against Everton will be brought forward by 24 hours after it was confirmed that Crystal Palace will visit the Emirates in the Carabao Cup quarter-finals on 23 December.
The Eagles had originally been due to play the tie on 16 December but faced the prospect of four games in eight days, squeezed between a league clash with Manchester City and a Europa Conference League match against Finnish side KuPS.
While Arsenal were willing to delay the fixture to ease Palace’s schedule, they understandably want to avoid a situation where they themselves have to play twice in the space of two days.
The Gunners’ first trip to Everton’s new Hill Dickinson Stadium is currently set for 2pm on Sunday, 21 December, after being selected for broadcast by Sky Sports. Moving it forward to Saturday would make more sense from a player welfare perspective, though it would cause complications for supporters who may already have made travel and accommodation plans.
Speaking from Prague on Monday night, Arteta said: “Hopefully they will move our Premier League match because to play two days later, it doesn’t make any sense obviously.
“We will now decide the date, I’m sure they will change the Premier League date as well.”
Asked to confirm whether the club had formally requested the change, he continued:
“I leave that to the club. I think we’re very clear what’s the best thing, the most logical date to play. I’m sure we’ll have to adapt to that.”
Arteta also reiterated the principles he outlined last week when discussing fixture scheduling: “As I said the other day, I’m sure we’ll apply the principles of, first of all, it’s the players, then it’s the supporters, and then the time [of fixtures].
“Now we need to have equality and the same chances for every club, so hopefully it will be fair.”
When it was put to him that Arsenal have the squad depth to cope with heavy rotation if necessary, Arteta pushed back:
“We have seven players out, so I don’t know what depth we’re talking about now because we’re missing a lot of players, a lot of front players. So if we continue to do that every three days, we won’t be respecting what we discussed earlier, which, in our opinion, is the most important part.”
For now, Arsenal await confirmation on whether the Premier League and Everton will accommodate their request.
The post “It doesn’t make any sense” – Arteta calls for Everton clash to be moved appeared first on Arseblog News – the Arsenal news site.
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