West Ham United boss David Moyes has every right to feel ‘disappointed’ by announcement
West Ham manager David Moyes has hit out at the “strange” rescheduling of Premier League fixtures around Christmas time, admitting the decision has left him “disappointed”.
The Hammers have had a number of games in December and early January rearranged after Sky Sports, TNT Sports and Amazon Prime confirmed their picks this week.
Most notably, West Ham’s home match with Manchester United has been moved to 12:30pm GMT on 23 December, while the following match away at Arsenal is now an 8:15pm GMT kick-off on 28 December.
Moyes is not happy that there are so many games crammed into a short period of time – as it the norm in English football at that time of the year – but it is another fixture change that particularly upset the Scotsman.
It was announced that Wolves versus Chelsea at Molineux will now take place on Christmas Eve – the first Premier League match staged on that day in some 28 years.
“I’m pretty disappointed to hear there will be a game [between Wolves and Chelsea] on Christmas Eve,” Moyes said, as per the club’s official website [27 October]. “I think there’s a culture here where there are days where we put [football] aside.
“Players, coaching staffs get very little time with their families and very little opportunity to be together because of the work schedule we’ve got, and this is another one of those moments that I’d be against it because it’s one of the times in the year when people do get the chance to be together.
“It’s only a short period too because we’ve already got an incredibly busy Christmas and New Year schedule. I find it quite strange.”
From a purely selfish point of view, having football on TV pretty much every day around the Christmas and New Year period is a good thing, but not so much for the matchgoing supporter.
A case in point is the trip to Emirates Stadium at the recently introduced start time of 8:15pm GMT on a Thursday.
West Ham have seven Premier League games in the space of a month starting with a home match against Crystal Palace on 3 December – and that is not to mention Europa League ties and a possible EFL Cup game.
You would think Moyes would be used to it after all this time as a Premier League manager, but that is not to say he does not have the right to be upset.
Football matches and Christmas are synonymous, though, and this is not something that will change anytime soon.
In other West Ham news, Moyes could be without some key players for the match against Everton on Sunday (29 October).