Liverpool\u2019s Premier League title defence has been a complete and utter disaster, and matters could get worse on Sunday when they travel to West Ham. The fixture will kick off at 2:05 p.m. GMT rather than the usual 2:00 p.m. Sunday slot, a subtle scheduling change that has attracted attention given Liverpool\u2019s recent form.<\/p>\n
The adjustment traces back to the Manchester United v Crystal Palace fixture in Gameweek 13. That match had been selected by TNT Sports as their televised 12:30 p.m. kick-off on Saturday but was moved to Sunday at 12:00 p.m. because of Palace\u2019s Conference League commitments. To provide extra time between fixtures and prevent any overlap on Sunday, the league moved all 2:00 p.m. kick-offs back by five minutes to 2:05 p.m.<\/p>\n
The revision affects three matches: West Ham vs Liverpool, Nottingham Forest vs Brighton & Hove Albion, and Aston Villa vs Wolverhampton Wanderers. The later 4:30 p.m. game between Chelsea and Arsenal is not affected by the change.<\/p>\n
For the superstitious within the Liverpool fanbase, Sunday\u2019s switch is bad news. Liverpool have appeared in the 2:05 p.m. slot only five times in the Premier League, losing three of those games and averaging just 0.8 points per game in that specific kick-off window. That record will do little to soothe concerns as the team prepares for another trip to the capital, having already lost all three of their visits there this season.<\/p>\n
The five-minute delay is minor in practical terms but significant in context. It was introduced purely to avoid scheduling overlap after the Man United v Crystal Palace change and applies across the affected Sunday fixtures. Fans and analysts will watch to see if the altered start time has any bearing on Liverpool\u2019s momentum in what has been a difficult season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sunday’s 2:05pm kick-off for Liverpool stems from the Man United v Crystal Palace reschedule. (More)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4774,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1281,175],"tags":[1162,1215],"class_list":["post-4775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gameweek-13","category-liverpool","tag-analytics","tag-controversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4775","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=4775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}