Dick Advocaat would like all fixtures on the final four weekends of the Premier League season to kick off at the same time on the same day.
Sunderland’s manager accepts the current system, staggered at varying hours over Saturday, Sunday and Monday, is designed to suit the demands of the game’s broadcast paymasters but, in an ideal world, he feels synchronicity would make the battle to avoid relegation fairer.
“I think, in these circumstances, the last four rounds of games should all be played at the same time and not at different times,” said the Dutchman.
“In Holland they do the last two games of the season at the same time. If the kick-offs are together we don’t have teams knowing how we’ve got on if we’ve played early.”
Sunderland kick off at lunchtime against Everton at Goodison Park on Saturday and Advocaat – whose third-bottom side subsequently have a home match with Leicester, followed by trips to Arsenal and Chelsea – is desperate to engineer a win.
“We have no time to have setbacks – the other teams at the bottom are winning as well,” he said. “It could go the last game of the season but confidence will be the key element for the teams that stay up.”
With Advocaat having presided over the collection of seven points from his five games in charge, Sunderland’s decision to hire him as Gus Poyet’s replacement looks a smart one. Even so, the former Holland manager accepts Ellis Short, the club’s owner, gambled in hiring a coach lacking previous experience of English football.
“It’s always difficult to bring in a foreign coach nine games before the end of the season,” said the 67-year-old, who will welcome back Wes Brown from injury at Everton, where he will be without the hamstrung John O’Shea. “I am not a real English-type coach so they took a risk by that, that the team have adapted really quickly to the way we work. We never speak about the previous coaches. They have gone, we are in and we have to do it.
“You cannot do it on your own. Understanding that is the most important thing. The consequences of when we go down is for the players, so very high. I have told them all. That kind of thing you need to talk to them about and they know what they have to do.”
