Pep Guardiola is unhappy at Premier League fixture scheduling…but he does not expect it to change any time soon.
His Manchester City team face Tottenham in the Champions League quarter-final second leg tomorrow night – around 65 hours before the two teams meet again at the Etihad Stadium in the league.
And as well as leaving little time for recovery, the way the fixtures have fallen in the last two weekends have also handed Spurs an advantage.
Mauricio Pochettino’s team had six days’ rest ahead of the first leg – which they won 1-0 – while Guardiola’s team played an FA Cup semi-final against Brighton just three days before.
And this weekend Tottenham faced a home game against relegated Huddersfield on Saturday lunchtime while City faced the long haul to Crystal Palace 24 hours later.
Guardiola turned the negativity of all that into a positive, but was still puzzled as to why the fixture schedulers do not take more care and give English teams playing in European competition a helping hand.
“I love this kind of challenge - they had six days and we had two before the first leg,” he said.
“I don’t understand why the Premier League put that game at 12.30 - I don’t understand it.”
But the City boss is not expecting change he says he remembers Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger both complaining about it in the 1990s.
“(When) I was in Barca, I listened many times to the newspapers that represented Ferguson and Wenger (say it),” he said.
“During three seasons here, I’ve never complained about the fixtures, their business to compete.
“Sometimes you have days to prepare and sometimes the opponents have more.
“The big clubs never complain, it’s what it is. And we’ll put our energy into playing one of the most physical teams in Europe, the long ball, the second balls, try to make an extra effort in the bad moments, our people in the bad moments, when we suffer, we will not give up. Our fans need it.”
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