Just wondering how everyone felt about it's introduction, as I suspect it's pretty controversial. I'm quite old fashioned, I guess, as I like to have a good number of Saturday 3pm kick-offs. It gives the fans and players some stability and it can be interesting even if you're not watching a game. The counter to this is that there'll still be plenty of lower league games, I guess. Splitting things up has cheapened individual televised games, in my opinion. We're heading towards the La Liga model, where every game is on TV and none of them are at the same time. I don't think that it works well for them and I think it's a mistake. A further negative is picking out appropriate ties. Local derbies would be a mistake, as you'd get lots of pissed up fans and the problems that involves. Picking more distant ones means travel issues and fans struggling to get to the stadiums, though. On the plus side, Rachel Riley. Er, that's about it, I think. So, what's everyone else's opinion on it? Am I just being a stick-in-the-mud and being left behind by a positive change? I've decided to leave out the fence-sitters option, as that's just boring. Pick a side!
I still like to go out with on Friday nights even though I don't have to work anymore, so I am against it Old habits die hard I suppose.
Thank you for this opportunity for a rant. I detest 4pm Sunday games and I suspect I am going to detest Friday night games even more should we be lumbered with one. The horrors of the North Circular or the awful A10, are dreadful every night game we play, and Friday's the traffic build up is always worse. I am a 3pm Saturday man and always will be. To tinker yet again with the fixtures is selfish, inconsiderate and downright greedy by the TV people. And if they just have to schedule games for Friday's, then it should be localised, so Manchester United should play another north-west side rather than haul Southampton fans from one end of the country to the other. I think a few seasons ago, we played Everton at the Lane in the FAC, and that meant we played a game on every day of the week that season. At the time that was considered to be almost freakish. Now it might be normal. Ludicrous !!!!
Friday night games have their place...the point is their place isn't in the top flight, but the lower leagues. The best example of this is Tranmere, as they regularly had increased gates when they played on Friday nights - partly due to their fixtures not clashing with those of their more glamorous Merseyside neighbours (feel free to insert a joke here...) and partly due to fans of whichever of those neighbours were playing away that weekend popping across the river to get their weekend fix.
I think all PL teams and their supporters should get used to friday nights. Spurs of course will be exempt from this, as it overlaps the Yiddish sabbath. As this would not be kosher, I therefore expect the Mike and Bernie Winters of right-on politics (Ivan and David Baddiel) to immediately be on the case of anyone who tried to make Spurs play on friday nights.
Who benefits from it? It'd be about 2 am in China, 6 in the morning in Australia, 3 in the afternoon to eastern America and 10 in the morning in western America. I don't see the point to be honest. All it does is mean away fans of the fixture in question have a ****ing nightmare. Southampton fans will have had to take the day off for tonight.
Like OS I prefer all games at 3pm Saturday. It is tedious when the only games played then are the lower teams with most of the big guns playing Sunday. However between Sunday 4pm and Friday at 8pm, I'd prefer Friday. A Friday night in the pub with friends watching football is great. Sunday afternoon is all about dreading Monday morning.
Pointless nonsense, IMO. Many away fans will get to the station - eventually - only to find that they've missed the last train. I'm virtually always out on Friday night, anyway, so I won't be watching...
Er, wouldn't that rule out 3pm on Saturday, too? More generally this is a typical reaction to change, I think. Matches have been played on Tuesday and Wednesday nights since Adam was a lad and they are much more inconvenient for travelling fans than Friday matches. I would have a mild preference for all matches to be televised with simultaneous kick-offs as the current system favours the bigger clubs.
To be brutally honest I'm not arsed about it. I'm out most Friday nights down the pub or round a mates for a cards night, so if a game is on I won't be complaining. If Spurs happen to be at the Lane then I'll be there, getting a win on a Friday night could be the start of a great evening and weekend, however, losing will result in a ****ing **** one. Though I agree with Spurcat in that it should be local games only, it's unfair on Soton fans to be travelling to Manchester tonight, they'll have had to look book the day/ half a day off of work and will then either need to stay up there for the night which'll only add to the cost or get home at God knows what time.
I think with the weekend starting on Friday evening, many will be glad to watch some football when they go out to the pub. For the dedicated TV football fans, there are now games throughout the weekend (you can probably see 6 or 7 live games over 48 hours). It sounds like good news to me. And that's without even mentioning Rachel Riley
Isn't she the archetypal Man Utd fan. Born in Southend so just a glory hunter. Beautiful glory hunter, but glory hunter all the same. She's even Jewish. She belongs down the Lane Edit. Her Dad is from Salford. I will let her off.
I've just seen that the programme starts at 6:30, yet the match doesn't kick off until 8. What on earth are they going to talk about for 90 minutes ??
Well I've seen match commentators prattle on for ages about Man Utd, during matches that Man Utd were not actually playing in. So filling in 90 mins of pre-match is childs play.