Winter Breaks

[Spikey M]

Coming to the Premier League from the season of 2019/20.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/44414487

Thoughts?

[-james-]

Is this the thing that was announced earlier in the year, where they stagger it so 10 teams play one week and 10 the next?

[Spikey M]

Dunno. It came up on BBC so I most freds’ed it.

[Disco]

James is right, although how much difference a week off will make is debatable. Football has to be the laziest most entitled sport around.

[Spikey M]

The teams could pretty much just do it themselves. Just give the players a week off training when you have a longish gap between 2 fixtures.

[Lewis]

It's nicely positioned for clubs (Jose Mourinho) to blame it for them losing momentum at a crucial time. Similarly, if you play on the second week, and then lose to a team who played the week before in your next fixture, you (Mourinho) could blame that. If there are too many fixtures then they need to play less fixtures. An obvious one would be to settle League Cup semi-finals with one game on neutral venues, or get rid of cup replays, or have two less bollocks England friendlies a year.

[Disco]

Which shows it up for the bullshit it is, you could give them a fortnight off and they'll just find something else to complain about.

[Jimmy Floyd]

If 'elite' player fitness matters, they should chuck four teams out of the league and have a 30 game season with a three week January break. If it doesn't, there is literally no point in having a break.

I always look for angles in these things, the Guardian people are all well up for the winter break. I think it's just more identity politics.

[Lewis]

Europe has them, and they are really clever and better at everything and Nigel Farage doesn't like them so...

[bruhnaldo]

So stupid.

[Spikey M]

The clubs will probably just use them as a chance to play a bullshit friendly in a ‘developing market’ anyway.

[Reg]

They've agreed not to do that.

I'm quite happy with it. Football on each week (slightly less games to choose from but hey). Plus a possible minor benefit for our players at tournaments, as well as the potential for higher quality matches.

[Shindig]

We only have about 12 players so we should be fine.

[mugbull]

Just get rid of the League Cup

[Adamski]

Why can other countries manage to have a standard winter shutdown for a period of time but England have to do this?

[Giggles]

Stiff upper lip and all that, etc.

[Lewis]

The festive pile-up is apparently sacrosanct, even though you would think the broadcasters would be more than happy to have those games to show at other times.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Probably not, I would guess they get higher viewing figures then. Also the PRODUCT is strong.