Didn’t know if this was the right thread for this but the utter contempt for match-going fans with fixture announcements.
At the start of the season, the PL announced that April TV fixtures would be announced on 21st Feb (in itself not within the supposed 6 week window they’re meant to give fans to make arrangements).
This was two days late on the 23rd and only included the first two weekends.
Our game vs Spurs was announced as being 9th April 5:30pm but to be moved to 10th at 4:30pm in a switch with Liverpool Man City if either of those sides is drawn in the CL QF on Tuesday 12th. That draw isn’t being made until next Saturday (19th March), giving 4 sets of fans three weeks rather than seven weeks to make travel and other arrangements. They should’ve just stuck us on the Sunday and the other game on the Saturday to start with, Sky would have to accept they weren’t getting the ‘super Sunday’ clash they wanted but tough luck.
Thats not even the worst thing about the announcement!
They only announced the first two weeks’ worth of games and said the rest of the April Tv fixtures would be announced “shortly after the FA Cup QF draw”, which happened 9 days ago now and still no sign of an announcement! It’s not fair on away fans who need to book long distance travel, it’s not fair on home fans who travel from afar (like me), it’s not fair on anybody who goes to matches that likes to make other social plans at weekends!
Also, we’ve had a game TBA vs Burnley since before Christmas, why can’t they just announce a date for that?! And our April 16th game vs Liverpool will almost certainly be moved as they’ll probably get into the FA cup semi finals, who knows when that will get rearranged for.
They should announce Aug-Xmas live TV games when the fixtures come out in June. Then announce Jan-March around late October and April-May at Xmas. That leaves the tv companies enough time to pick up on form trends and choose games with teams battling relegation and chasing the title/Europe but also means people can make plans.
Tl;dr - Long rant about taking match-going fans for granted! I know it won’t change!