STAN COLLYMORE
Football’s ultimate maverick sounds off
WHICHEVER part of the world Jurgen Klopp is holidaying in, I am sure he’ll have sat on his balcony on Thursday night.
The German will have had a sundowner in one hand, phone in the other, taking in the Premier League fixtures.
He will have noted Liverpool’s run-in is a good one, with winnable games against Brentford, Leicester, Aston Villa and Southampton bringing the curtain down.
And that if his side are still in the title race by then, they will fancy their chances.
Hurdles
The bad news, though, is that there will be extra hurdles to clear to get there.
Most notably four of their six Champions League group stage fixtures being followed immediately by top-flight games against Big Six opposition in Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester City and Tottenham.
No doubt Klopp, a man who already has a feeling the fixture schedulers are against Liverpool, will have plenty to say about that. Because, for a club only just getting to grips with having a squad able to deal with all four competitions,
it is not good news.
Regular readers will know I usually tell Klopp and his fellow top bosses to stop whining about such matters given the resources they have – but this time even I have a degree of sympathy.
I mean, how can it be fair that Liverpool have it all on while Manchester United are clear of top-six opponents after their Europa League fixtures?
It makes me wonder if we need to have a serious conversation about doctoring the fixture list now in a bid to aid our clubs’ quests for success in Europe.
Whether a rule should be brought in which states top-four clubs will not be expected to face other top-four clubs straight after Champions League matches... or whether we just continue to say, ‘Sorry, that’s just the rub of the green and you have to deal with it’.
Whichever way you look at it, Liverpool have not got that rub of the green here.
Should we not at least have a conversation about what extremes we are willing to go to in a bid to help our sides in European competition?
Klopp has said before that if you play in Europe on a Tuesday, your next Premier League game should be the following Saturday.
And if you are in action on the Wednesday, your next domestic game is on the Sunday.
If you’re playing Europa League football on a Thursday, of course, it follows that you ought to play on the Monday.
That’s just common sense.
But is it time now to have a chat about going a step further by saying, ‘OK, if we can move the day a game is due to be played to suit television, then why can’t we change fixtures around so that after European involvement a Champions League club plays Nottingham Forest, Fulham, Bournemouth or, say, the likes of Crystal Palace?’
Weaker
It makes me wonder if we need a serious conversation about doctoring the fixtures with Europe in mind
I’m still erring towards saying you deal with what the computer throws up.
But I can see sooner rather than later the Big Six flexing their muscles in Premier League meetings.
I have a vision of them saying, ‘Do you want us to do well in Europe or not? Because if you do, playing games against each other afterwards doesn’t work as in one of those two games we will have to put out a weaker team’.
They will point to the fact that not only do we enhance Premier League branding by having a great league, we also enhance it when our clubs do well in European competitions.
And while fans of the other 16 top-flight clubs might not get on board, you can bet that at Anfield Klopp won’t be the only one thinking it’s a conversation worth having.