Man City boss Pep Guardiola has revealed that he is in complete agreement with Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp on the over-packed fixture list.
As noted by Sky Sports, the Reds coach shared his opinion on the matter this week with the schedule over the festive period in mind.
Having advanced in the Carabao Cup, Liverpool have a fixture clash given their commitments in the FIFA Club World Cup in Qatar in December, and so it remains to be seen what solutions are offered to avoid a scenario in which they are forced to play two different sides.
Klopp has received sympathy and a sense of agreement from his main title rival in Guardiola, who echoed his opinion on the situation as he also insisted that the fixture schedule, particularly over the winter period, is too much.
“I completely agree with Jurgen,” Guardiola told the media, as quoted by Football365. “We need less fixtures, more competitions, more recovery, we play 27, 28 [games] in winter time. It’s a debate from a long time ago. I completely agree with Jurgen on these kind of statements about ‘too much’.
“I prioritise – I didn’t play Ilkay, Kevin, Silva last game. Jurgen has done the same, Arsenal have done the same. It’s too much, it’s too much.”
As rightly pointed out by Guardiola, it’s a long standing issue that has been slammed for a while but with no effective solutions being found and perhaps with the huge commercial benefits that come with having a packed Christmas schedule, it’s a problem that will continue to frustrate managers.
However, it has seemingly found common ground between Klopp and Guardiola, who have put their rivalry to one side to agree that the fixtures issue is having a negative impact on both their plans and respective squads.
While it’s now too late for an effective solution to be found this season, they’ll simply have to cope and also hope that further discussions can take place in the future for the situation to be addressed to give a helping hand to the players and clubs as a whole.
