Man United Claims Its Research Shows Its Holiday Schedule Is the Toughest
The Christmas football fixture schedule is a treasure trove for fans across the country who love nothing more than to watch hours of the beautiful game during their time off work.
For the players, staff and everyone else who works at clubs up and down the UK, however, it's less than ideal playing games - particularly if they're away from their families at this wonderful time of year.
Premier League managers have grown accustomed to moaning about the packed nature of the fixture list at this time, but Manchester United - not Jose Mourinho himself - have gone one further by taking to their official site to cry foul about their upcoming schedule.
The Red Devils claim that in-house research shows that they have the least amount of off days over Christmas - six to be exact - while rivals such as Arsenal and Tottenham have nine in total, Chelsea eight, and Manchester City and Liverpool seven.
The article goes on to state: "United and Leicester will play four games between 23 December and 1 January after our clash at the King Power Stadium was switched to a Saturday night kick-off.
"With 12 points up for grabs as we move from 2017 to 2018, it all seems a far cry from October and November, when we had three and four league games respectively throughout those whole months.
"December is a different beast altogether with nine outings in all competitions, plus a quick turnaround between Saturday's tea-time clash with Southampton on 30 December and the away game at resurgent Everton on New Year's Day [Monday], also kicking off at 17:30 GMT."
With a number of other league and FA Cup clashes in January as well, United feel as though they've been hard done by with regards to the timing of their matches.
It's arguably a fair point to have, but then isn't that what having a 25-man senior squad is all about? To be able to rest and rotate tired, injured or suspended players?
It would be interesting to see if United had a similar number of days between games as Arsenal. We bet they wouldn't be moaning then...
