Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has made clear the club will resist moving its Carabao Cup quarter-final against Crystal Palace to Dec. 23, after Palace asked for an alternative date amid a severe fixture pile-up.<\/p>\n
The quarter-final is currently scheduled for Tuesday, Dec. 16. Arsenal and Palace reached this stage by overcoming Brighton & Hove Albion and Liverpool in the fourth round respectively. Palace say the proposed date leaves them with three matches in five days: Manchester City are due to visit Selhurst Park two days prior in the Premier League and Palace then face KuPS in the Conference League two days after the scheduled cup tie.<\/p>\n
Palace sought options after playing on Christmas Eve was ruled out following consultation with the Metropolitan police and Transport for London, and the Eagles proposed Dec. 23 as a possible alternative. Arsenal, who face Wolves a day before City travel to south London, have not agreed to that change.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s fair, because we have other competitions as well we have to try to accommodate,\u201d Arteta said at his news conference. \u201cWe knew at the start of the season the competitions that each club is playing in \u2026 On balance we have to try to accommodate the best possible way for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked specifically about the Dec. 23 option he added: \u201cNo, there are others. There are others, believe me, there are other options much better than this one. We already suggested that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The EFL, which governs the Carabao Cup, has yet to make an official ruling and both clubs expect a decision in the coming week.<\/p>\n
Concerns about fixture congestion and player workload are not new. This summer\u2019s Club World Cup provided little respite for players from Chelsea, Manchester City, Real Madrid and other leading clubs, and there have been suggestions that strike action might be needed to force governing bodies to listen.<\/p>\n
On that point Arteta was clear about his hopes and priorities: \u201cHopefully not. If we look after the players’ welfare and our supporters, I think we’re never going to get to that point. And that’s it. We have to close the window there. We cannot open that window. It has to be closed. It’s our most precious value.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have the best league in the world and we cannot just open any window for anything just to lose that because we don’t respect that, and we forget what we are made of and what makes this game and this league so, so special. And if we respect that, I’m sure we’re going to be totally fine.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta says Dec. 23 is unfair for Arsenal as Palace seek change amid a congested fixture schedule..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4186,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1067,465],"tags":[1208,1066],"class_list":["post-4187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-carabao-cup","category-crystal-palace","tag-boxing-day","tag-carabao-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}