Yep, Fergie always had a moan if he didn't like the fixtures. Nothing to see here.
Moyes So Far!
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
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Strange one having the league spokesman come out and confirm it. My take is he just had a quiet word and didn't expect them to publicly confirm this.
Don't like what Moyes said about the fixtures to be honest, there's just no need for it.
Well I've never read those. The 2009 one is pretty strong.
Doesnt make Moyes' comments any better though. Don't think he should have said it. Anyway not a big deal.
I find the complaining part odd. We're used to Fergie moaning about fixtures, but officially complaining to Premier League is a bit too much.
Just sign a classy midfielder already.
I don't know, I always thought that was the implication.
Meh, all the top club managers do it all the time. Mancini was perpetually moaning about that sort of thing, Wenger regularly does it, Fergie did it, I'm sure Mourinho would do the same if he got a fixture list he didn't like... Moyes is just playing the game like everyone else.
Sky pay £3,000,000,000 for broadcasting rights and are waging war with BT. They desperately need to retain customers and target new ones before they look elsewhere.
Manchester United - the most watched club in the league - have a ridiculous fixture list at the start of the season, with the first 7 being:
Swansea, Chelsea, Liverpool, Crystal Palance, City, Sunderland Arsenal.
All of those matches bar one are being shown live on Sky Sports, with BT getting the Palace game.
Manchester United - the most watched club in the league - have a ridiculous fixture list at the start of the season, with the first 7 being:
Swansea, Chelsea, Liverpool, Crystal Palance, City, Sunderland Arsenal.
All of those matches bar one are being shown live on Sky Sports, with BT getting the Palace game.
To be honest I wish he wouldn't do it. I'm not convinced there's anything to be gained, so the only net effect is we have to put up with ABU dicks posting illiterate comments about Moyes on Facebook etc.
My other posts on the subject are clearer. United v Liverpool, Arsenal v Chelsea (or a variation), Super Sunday, The "Big Four" (as they were) coming out of the fixture list against each other on the same weekend countless times. Sky made a big deal out of these Super Sunday clashes between the top four clubs, for 4 or 5 years on the trot. How do those fixtures come out like that without help?
It did. Sky made such a big deal out of their Super Sunday Big Four clashes. When two played each other the other two often played on the same day.
I'm willing to bet that if you worked out the actual statistical likelihood, it's not been far off the predicted averae. After all, I can think of lots of big clashes that happened routinely, not as part of some big double-header. It's just that generally you notice these things when they happen and not when they don't.
I'm shit at maths, but I'm sure someone could easily work it out. There are six teams that would qualify for that 'Super Sunday' type match, I think: United, City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Spurs.
(Spurs in their own right might not seem like one, but consider that it counts whenever they play Chelsea or especially Arsenal, because it's the 'big London derby', or whenever the other match is one of the big teams against Arsenal, such as the weekend when City thrashed Spurs 6-1 and we responded by thrashing Arsenal 8-2.)
Exactly, plus a game like Everton v Liverpool would probably count too, wouldn't it? Between all those teams playing each other twice you have a fair amount of games. All you need is 2+ to land on the same day.
That's not the point I was making though. It was those four teams specifically, for a 4/5 year period, and they almost always played each other on the same day. Those 4, not Spurs or City or a derby match of some sort throw in. Those specific four. It happened much more often than you'd expect it to just come out of the hat. Look it up.
Again, I was specifically talking about those four, where when two played the other two played. On Super Sunday. I can't be the only one who remembers those specific four in frequent double headers, and Sky hyping the shit out of these "Big Four" clashes, surely?
I'm too lazy, so I'll take your word for it until someone else can be bothered. I didn't realise you were talking specifically about the old 'big four'.
That's not to mention that there is a huge number of combinations that aren't allowed.
E.g. We can't play at home on the same day that City do, which is true for a lot of clubs.
So games where Arsenal, United, Liverpool and Chelsea are playing each other on the same weekend?
It didn't happen (as far as I can tell) in 2013/14, 2012/13, 2011/12, 2010/11 or 2009/10. I'm too lazy to look back any further but a 5+ year gap is pretty big statistically.
Since then, though, you can add City and Spurs to the big match day mix.
You're right.
The fixture list isn't random for a lot of genuine police reasons. It also isn't random for a lot of TV reasons.
It's odd for me to be fighting on behalf of a United manager, but I think Moyes is right to make a point about it. It's a ridiculous opening set of fixtures and I don't think it's just a coincidence.
TN was talking about the traditional four though. If we add City and Spurs it actually makes it quite likely that you'll get Super Weekends. By my (very dodgy) maths that'd be around 30 games a season? Only two of which have to fall on the same weekend. Over a 38 week league that's not unlikely, is it?
Not much can be said about that now, indeed. But there certainly did seem to be a time when you'd have those double-super-sunday's when you only had a big four. Now it continues with a big six, which makes it more likely, but not inevitable as it normally is. Liverpool-United and Arsenal-Spurs on the same day, is it really just the luck of the draw?
They draw by weekend rather than day, don't they? So if we're talking about a top six (plus games like Everton v Liverpool), that's 30+ games out of 380, over 38 weeks. Only two of those games have to fall on the same weekend to be viable for a "Super Sunday" type scenario, so I think that's quite likely probability wise. You'd need someone better at maths to confirm that though.
I'm only correcting you because it's City that you're crediting. It was 1-5.
Cheers.Wonder why City winning 6-1 came into my head
December 2007 and March 2008- twice in one season. Not very random if you ask me.
Who was talking about a top 6 and games like Liverpool v Everton? I wasn't. I was specifically talking about the much hyped (at the time) big four, and the frequent Super Sunday double headers.
Amir mentioned the top 6, that's why that reply was directed towards him.
You were on about weekends where the classic big 4 (Arsenal, Chelsea, United, Liverpool) were playing each other, right? That's happened four times in the last eleven years. Those four did come in quick succession but sometimes statistical quirks happen. Hardly an air-tight basis for a conspiracy.
What's the relevance of the last eleven years? Surely the only significant period to look at is the time that those four teams were far and away the best in the country. Which, I'm guessing, is the period that those four weekends occurred in?
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This. Four years on the trot where the big four were hyped to feck by Sky, and lo and behold they all play each other on big Super Sunday double headers. The fact that it hasn't happened at all since highlights even more, for me, that when these four teams were the pinnacle of English football the fixture list was tweaked to give Sky their bumper weekends.
And that's twice now that the word conspiracy has been used in response to a post by me on this subject, when I've yet to lay any accusation of a conspiracy. I've simply suggested that the fixture list isn't completely random in nature, and that it gets tweaked on occasion for certain reasons, be it policing, television or to accommodate other competitions. I've yet to suggest the fixture list has been fixed to hamper our start to the season, I've simply suggested that the notion that "Oh, its done by a computer, its entirely random and never gets tweaked or altered in any way" is a bit naïve.
The problem is that narrowing it down too much increases the chance of random coincidence affecting the pattern. To do it totally accurately I'd have to look at how often the top ranked teams played against each other over an extended period. I'm not going to do that as a) it would take too much effort and b) I'd have to figure out who were considered to be the top ranked teams at any given point.
If you want to narrow it down to when Liverpool were still a force and Chelsea had Abramovich's money you're left with four occurrences in 8 years. As I said though, 8 years is a very small sample size statistically speaking.
I'm certain they tweak things when the draws are made, as you say they have various reasons for doing that. My point was that a) the Super Sundays didn't happen for five seasons in a row as you said earlier and b) the Super Sundays that did happen are few enough to be reasonably explained as a statistical quirk. That might not be what actually happened but it's certainly very, very possible.
It'd be pointless to look at any other period. I don't think anyone's suggesting that this has always happened with the top teams. Just that it happened in the brief period when there were only 4 teams that were seen to have a chance of getting champions league football.
You're right to say that it isn't proof. It is reason for suspicion though, given this unlikely occurrence happened to be what a very large company, with a history of corruption, would have wished for.
Wenger last year :
“The Premier League should be very much bigger than they are in front of that. I do not want to go personally on any one club but, if things are repeated, then it’s not a coincidence any more. There’s a real problem there. The Premier League should master the fixtures.
“It can’t happen every year that some clubs have advantages compared in relation to the fairness of the competition. At the moment, television decides. You cannot have decisive games with one team playing Friday and Tuesday, and another on Sunday and Tuesday. I’ve been working for 30 years in football, and it is not right. It’s not fair.”
When asked if he could provide evidence of fixing, Wenger replied: “What do you call proof? I am in sport. If I fight with you in a 100m run and you have to run the semi-final on Sunday morning and run against me on Sunday afternoon and I have a run on Friday morning, I don’t need to accuse anyone. I just say: ‘Is that fair or not?’ It’s not. The responsibility of the Premier League is to make sure that Premier League fixtures are better distributed than they are.
“If the Premier League doesn’t decide, it is the television that decides. That means that television can influence and the Premier League has nothing to say. That’s what, basically, I think is not right. Because if, tomorrow, you buy a club and your best friend is the owner of Sky TV you don’t think you will tell him, ‘Look, you put us on Friday night. That’s not fair’? Or, ‘You put us on Sunday night, that’s not fair’. We have sold our soul and we do not control our games, our fixtures, any more.”
“The Premier League should be very much bigger than they are in front of that. I do not want to go personally on any one club but, if things are repeated, then it’s not a coincidence any more. There’s a real problem there. The Premier League should master the fixtures.
“It can’t happen every year that some clubs have advantages compared in relation to the fairness of the competition. At the moment, television decides. You cannot have decisive games with one team playing Friday and Tuesday, and another on Sunday and Tuesday. I’ve been working for 30 years in football, and it is not right. It’s not fair.”
When asked if he could provide evidence of fixing, Wenger replied: “What do you call proof? I am in sport. If I fight with you in a 100m run and you have to run the semi-final on Sunday morning and run against me on Sunday afternoon and I have a run on Friday morning, I don’t need to accuse anyone. I just say: ‘Is that fair or not?’ It’s not. The responsibility of the Premier League is to make sure that Premier League fixtures are better distributed than they are.
“If the Premier League doesn’t decide, it is the television that decides. That means that television can influence and the Premier League has nothing to say. That’s what, basically, I think is not right. Because if, tomorrow, you buy a club and your best friend is the owner of Sky TV you don’t think you will tell him, ‘Look, you put us on Friday night. That’s not fair’? Or, ‘You put us on Sunday night, that’s not fair’. We have sold our soul and we do not control our games, our fixtures, any more.”
I dont know what he gained by coming out with those comments. Yes, its a difficult opening spell but there is nothing that will be done by him coming out with comments like these.
SAF did it all the time.
I guess the aim is to influence the referees for some slight advantage. I imagine there's a small chance that 50/50 decisions might more often go your way if the officials have it in the back of their minds that you're up against it.
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