Aston Villa director Damian Vidagany publicly criticised the Premier League over the timing of his club\u2019s fixture with Arsenal, which is scheduled less than 72 hours after Villa\u2019s trip to Stamford Bridge to face Chelsea. The clash with Arsenal at the Emirates is set for Dec. 30.<\/p>\n
Emery questioned the logic behind the sequence of fixtures in the build-up to the game. \u201cWe must accept it, because it is not in our hands,\u201d Emery said. \u201cThe only thing I don\u2019t understand is why we are playing after Arsenal, Nottingham Forest at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe day 19 is not against Forest, which is the first half of the season. This is the only thing I don\u2019t understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mikel Arteta\u2019s side meet Aston Villa on Tuesday evening before they travel for a first meeting with Bournemouth in 2025\u201326 at the weekend.<\/p>\n
Vidagany posted on X in support of Emery and levelled criticism at the league\u2019s planning. \u201cTotally understand our manager. Why EPL brings a match day from 2nd half of season before matchday 19 has not a clear explanation. I asked to EPL people and they didn\u2019t tell us. So it is a mystery,\u201d he posted on the eve of the game.<\/p>\n
He continued: \u201cThe fact is that willing or not this makes more convenient the fixtures for certain clubs that are not travelling on this very busy Christmas period. I let you take a look which clubs are playing home both last and next match. To make us play two away games in less than 72 hours will be never an excuse but we agree that is much better on the recovery side play twice at home and not travel.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not, for sure, as it is obvious, having any influence. It would be a disgrace if the fixtures become a political territory.\u201d<\/p>\n
When one X user pointed out that Arsenal, Chelsea, Man Utd and Liverpool all had two home games over the Christmas period, Vidagany replied: \u201cRandom.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the scheduling controversy, Villa will take the field hoping to repeat their earlier result against Arsenal. Emery\u2019s men, who come into the match on an 11-game winning streak, defeated the league-leaders 2\u20131 back in December thanks to a stoppage-time winner from Emiliano Buend\u00eda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Villa director attacks fixture timing as Arsenal match arrives under 72 hours after Chelsea trip for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5516,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,711,172],"tags":[1215],"class_list":["post-5517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-aston-villa","category-epl","tag-controversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5517","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=5517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}