Quarter Final Confusion

The FA Cup Quarter Finals are scheduled to take place on the nights of Monday 20th March, Tuesday 21st March, Wednesday 22nd March and Thursday 23rd March. Straightforward so far. Of the quarter finalists remaining no fewer than five have live Sky games already scheduled the previous weekend; Birmingham and Villa on the Saturday and Liverpool, Newcastle and Chelsea on the Sunday. That means the last three would not want to play their tie until the Wednesday at the earliest. Fine, so Liverpool v Birmingham and Chelsea v Newcastle can be played on the Wednesday and Thursday. However, with both Boro and Bolton possibly having UEFA cup games on the previous Thursday they will not want to play their weekend Premier League fixture until the Sunday. To then ask one of them to play an FA Cup quarterfinal the next day is obviously absurd. Both these teams would, quite rightly, want to play on the Wednesday or Thursday night. So, no candidates so far for either the Monday or Tuesday night fixture. Also, those teams that play on the Thursday are going to want to move the following Saturday’s fixture to the Sunday so causing further disruption to the Sky schedules.

Curbs seems to have the logical answer when he suggests that the Quarter Finals be played on the Saturday and Sunday of 18th and 19th March and then the scheduled league games played during the midweek, either Tuesday or Wednesday. This seems fine but with Sky having already scheduled four games for that weekend, all involving one team or another from the quarterfinals, would they be prepared to accept just two QF live games that weekend and just two live games during the week instead of the four now scheduled. Factor into that teams may lose revenue for not being on live as now scheduled and it’s a right royal mess. I wouldn’t want to be the one at the FA to have to sort it out. Whatever is decided one team or another is going to be unhappy with the arrangements and I can’t help but think that it’s going to be us.

And the reason for this mess ? So that Sven Gormless Eriksson can have extra time with the England squad to prepare for what will ultimately be an inglorious World Cup campaign.