Liverpool are facing a fixture headache after seeing two Premier League matches postponed following the death of Queen Elizabeth II last week.
The Reds were scheduled to host Wolverhampton Wanderers on Saturday 10 September, however, all matches last weekend were cancelled as a mark of respect following the Monarch’s passing. Meanwhile, Liverpool ’s trip to Chelsea on Sunday 18 September has also been called off due to policing resource being stretched in London ahead of the Queen’s funeral on Monday.
With the season already truncated by the 2022 World Cup, which gets underway in Qatar on November 20, the Reds are committed to playing a match every weekend and midweek following the September international break right up until when the Premier League breaks up for the winter tournament the weekend of November 12 and 13. As a result, with there being no available dates in 2022, Jurgen Klopp ’s side remain in limbo regarding when their cancelled fixtures can actually be played.
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English football gets back underway with the fourth round of the League Cup on the midweek of December 20, just two days after the World Cup final, before the Premier League resumes on Boxing Day, with three blocks of fixtures taking place over the festive period.
And, as ESPN explains in greater detail, with domestic cup, European fixtures and international breaks to take into account, it leaves only three vacant midweek slots which were built into the Premier League season before the final day of the campaign on Sunday 28 May. However, those three spaces are reserved for catching up on future matches that will need to be rearranged if a side reaches the latter stages of the League Cup and FA Cup.
Of course, if Liverpool see their League Cup or FA Cup defences end prematurely, they could use either the aforementioned vacancies in the fixture list or the matchdays allocated to domestic cup competitions to catch up if necessary. However, that relies on Wolves and Chelsea not having domestic cup commitments themselves.
English clubs’ progress in Europe could also complicate things further, with there a Memorandum Of Understanding between the leagues and UEFA that matches won't be played at the same time as Champions League matches, if at all possible. Admittedly, sometimes it cannot be avoided, as was the case last year when Liverpool played games in hand against Leeds United and Arsenal in the two Champions League round of 16 gameweeks they were not involved in.
However, if Chelsea for example were on the other side of the draw to the Reds, neither side would be free at the same time to catch up on such a fixture. Meanwhile, if either side were to finish third in their Champions League group and drop down to the Europa League, they would lose those spare gameweeks due to participation in the knockout round play-offs.
Cancelling FA Cup third and/or fourth round replays once again or making the League Cup semi-finals one-legged would open up a spare gameweek. As would switching the dates of the FA Cup final (June 3) and last day of the Premier League season (May 28).
However, it’s clear that in the unlikely event that Liverpool can come close to replicating their domestic cup double while reaching the Champions League final of last season, their fixture congestion will only get worse.
Yet the progress of their rivals will also decide their options further, with it even possible the Premier League might have no choice but to schedule fixtures so a side has to play two midweek fixtures and four games in little over a week, as happened to Manchester United in May 2021.
Of course, such possibilities are worst-case scenarios with the fixture list becoming clearer after Monday 7 November following the Champions League round of 16 draw. As a result, the Premier League are unlikely to pencil in dates for postponed fixtures until the likes of Liverpool’s commitments have become clearer. Until then, the Reds remain in limbo as they wait to fight out just how bad a fixture headache they are set to suffer.
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