Change of Fixtures

We've had one or two already being moved to a Sunday, now the Hearts game is being brought forward to the Fri night on the 14th Dec, and we've a midweek game away to Aberdeen on Tues 11th Dec, anyone else with a bit of common sense wants the players to get a day extra recovery time, not reduce it to a day less, well done the SPFL on their looking after the players before TV money priority.

It the same number of games as between a Saturday and Tuesday isn't it?

Actually more worried about the impact it will have against potential gate receipts.

It's the minimum time for recovery between games two games running.

Bad enough they take a Sat fixture and put it as a Tues one, but to then take another Sat fixture and move it to the same week as the other one and give us two games with only two days recovery in a row is taking the fecking piss.

But its BT that choose the games they want to televise so I'm not sure the SFA can do much about it. Actually I think I read somewhere that there's an undertaking that they won't televise a game from any stadium more than four times a year which is a lot better deal than with Sky.

We've actually got 3 midweek games in Dec, including this Tues/Fri clusterfuck. 8 games then a Winter break, they really know how to schedule games in the top flight. International breaks and a Winter break, but cram the shit out of December's fixtures.

No game this Saturday, so a week on Wed for our next game, at home to St Johnstone. The top flight fixtures are all over the place, really have to keep checking them to see when we're playing.

Was initially thinking we might get a closed door friendly or something set up for this Saturday but with a game on Wednesday there probably isn't much point. The break we just had didn't do the players any harm anyway.

It's a hunger and a burst for us this season, we're going to be frantic in December before a winter break lay off. Then straight back into 2 games a week when we play again, fecking mental this top flight.

Liviforever wrote:It's a hunger and a burst for us this season, we're going to be frantic in December before a winter break lay off. Then straight back into 2 games a week when we play again, fecking mental this top flight.

Not to mention the fixture backlog brought about by frozen or waterlogged pitches - oh wait....

We can still get frozen or waterlogged pitches and games re-arranged they will just be away games.

Lothiangamer wrote:We can still get frozen or waterlogged pitches and games re-arranged they will just be away games.

Indeed but two of them have synthetic pitches already whilst at least two of the others spend more on pitch protection than we are able to spend on the entire team.

Looks like Lennon is agreeing with me on this ridiculous fixture pile up in December, and the long breaks between games leading up to it too, he's on the telly complaining about it.

Looking at the fixtures in December I'm not sure there's many I'd recommend resting players for:


Of those St Mirren at home SHOULD be the most suitable candidate for resting one or two but I'd be loathed to rest anyone for the Dundee away game. Sooner or later they've got to start picking up points and Boxing Day at home is just the time to do it.

We've players good enough to be getting games though so why not play them when these fixtures are congested? Guys like Robinson, Menga and Jacobs are going to be jaded, i'd rather see Sibbald, Burns and Hardie getting games than keep playing players twice weekly week after week and knackering them. We'll need to utilise our squad if we're going to have a sustained level of performance keeping us in the top 6. Niggly injuries and suspensions will no doubt force that upon us anyway.

Hoppy would've been more likely to rotate players when twice weekly games came up but Holt likes to keep the same starting 11 if they've shown they've been good enough to keep their place. But in an 8 games in a month period I think it's wise to try and keep the team as fresh as possible.

We haven’t had that many fixtures so close together so far so you don’t really know what Holt will do. He does like a settled team but I think he’s wise enough to know that some rotation will be useful with such a heavy workload.