Robin Van Persie blames the FA for Arsenal’s tight schedule
Robin Van Persie thinks that the FA scheduled the games weird for Manchester City and Arsenal and that this might affect both teams this season. The Dutch striker thinks that playing a game every 3 days can be tiring for any team and that they shouldn’t have to do that because their football will lack quality.
“Saturday’s game was our third in seven days, and that’s a lot of football,” he told Arsenal.com
“We had a tough game at Norwich in which we had to fight until the very last minute, while four days later we had an intense game against a very fit Borussia Dortmund side that kept us occupied right until the end. “
“Recovery time between Wednesday and Saturday was our shortest for a while; it’s not an excuse, but if you play Saturday-Wednesday-Saturday you do perhaps feel five or ten per cent different than you would if you had an extra 24 hours. “
“We still had our chances to win against Fulham, but I think everyone sensed that there was a little bit of fatigue somewhere.”
“Manchester City have a similar situation this evening, to be fair – even worse, because they had a really tough game at Liverpool only two days ago. I know it’s hard to get the fixtures right for every single team, but I don’t really understand the scheduling for either us or City. “
“These are big games, screened everywhere on TV, and people expect everyone to be fit and put in an amazing performance. At some point, that’s not realistic – if you’re playing four games in nine days, you’ll suffer in the end. Sometimes I feel the fixtures could be decided a little more sensibly.”
Robin Van Persie is right to some extent, but it’s better to be a busy team than to drop out of some competitions like the cup and Champions League and have too much spear time. It’s not really FA’s fault that the games are scheduled like this because they have to be synchronised with the UEFA games as well.
