Arsenal have reportedly rejected attempts by Crystal Palace to move their League Cup quarter-final, with Oliver Glasner warning it would be “irresponsible” to force his team to play four matches in eight days, but are Arsenal actually refusing?
The fixture looks set to be scheduled for Tuesday 16 December at the Emirates. That date would leave Palace facing an intense run including league games against Manchester City and Leeds United, plus Conference League ties against Shelbourne and KuPS Kuopio, all within the same week.
I’ve yet to see a single Arsenal fan think this is fair on Palace. Mikel Arteta also thinks it’s unfair.
According to reports, however, Palace have requested the match be delayed until 23 December to ease their schedule, but Arsenal are opposed the change.
Ahead of this weekend’s fixtures, Glasner voiced his frustration at the situation, describing it as a failure of coordination between football’s governing bodies. “Honestly I can’t believe this will be fixed in this way, because this would be irresponsible for the players and everybody,” he said.
“We have a responsibility for the players and we have to look after their welfare. I’m really upset – when I heard about it I couldn’t believe they are considering this.”
He added, reasonably, that better planning should have taken place before the season began. “In the summer, in the off-season, there are people who have to work on the schedule – I would really prefer it if they worked together. It would be nice if UEFA, the Premier League, the EFL and the FA talk together. Get it organised. Get it sorted before.”
For his part, Mikel Arteta is reported as arguing that both clubs knew the demands of their fixture lists at the start of the season and that the moving the game risks injuries to “two sets of players rather than one”.
“I don’t think that’s fair because we have other competitions as well,” the i reported Arteta as saying in response to being asked if the game should be moved on ‘sporting integrity grounds’. “We knew at the start of the season the competitions that each club is playing in. Every decision that we make in terms of a fixture has to be guided on two main things – players’ welfare and then supporters. That’s it.”
However, when you read what he said in full from other outlets – and the question he was asked in the first place – it gives a very different impression. According to Arseblog, Arteta was asked if “Arsenal could tell Palace their fixture congestion is their problem“, and Arteta replied, “I don’t think that’s fair because obviously we have other competitions as well. So I think we have to try to accommodate.
“We knew at the start of the season the competitions that the club is playing and I don’t think that would be fair on Palace. We have to try to accommodate it [the game] in the best possible way for everybody.”
Then asked about there not being another available slot, Arteta was quite clear; “No, there are others. Believe me, there are other options much better than this one.”
That doesn’t seem like much of a refusal to me, at all.
With the EFL quarter-finals due to be played in mid-December and semi-finals scheduled for early January, fixture congestion remains a serious challenge. While Palace understandably ask for help, Arsenal’s focus is on avoiding disruption to their own calendar during an already punishing winter run, but they aren’t being dicks about it.
The issue, regardless of outcome, highlights once again the Premier League’s scheduling chaos, where fixture pile-ups are increasingly viewed as an inevitable part of success across multiple competitions rather than a problem anyone is willing to solve.