Man Utd's Friday Night Fixture: A Taste of Things to Come

Tomorrow night, Manchester United travel to Villa Park for an unfamiliar Friday night Premier League fixture. The match was originally due to take place in a normal Saturday slot, but an English Defence League (EDL) march scheduled in Walsall on Saturday afternoon led local police to push for the game to be moved.

With United’s Champions League play-off against Club Brugge on Tuesday, the Villa game couldn’t be moved to Sunday, as that would have meant only a day to recover for the Reds. Instead, the team will now get an extra day’s rest, which should only be of benefit when European football returns to Old Trafford next week.

Recovery times get talked about a lot, with teams in the Europa League always said to be at a disadvantage with Thursday evening games followed by league fixtures the following Sunday, and the data backs up this claim - a 27,000 game study of top-tier and European football across seven countries found that teams playing after just two days’ recovery were 42% less likely to win than those who had enjoyed a three day break.

If the EDL had their way, they’d probably ban English teams from having any part in the European Champions League, so it’s somewhat ironic that their impending far-right hate-fest may well improve United’s chances of progressing in the competition.

As gratifying as that may be, I’m personally not keen on the idea of Friday night football becoming the norm in future. But that’s where things are heading - from 2016/17, around 10 games a season will be played on Friday nights, and there are continued hints that overseas Premier League games might not be far behind.

Friday nights may be attractive to armchair fans and potentially good for teams playing Tuesday Champions League games, but there are a few reasons why I’m not comfortable with this development.

The practicalities for fans travelling to away games, after work on a Friday evening, are pretty miserable. A journey of any notable distance will mean returning home in the early hours or an expensive overnight stay. Even for home games, I can imagine the borderline apocalyptic scenes as Manchester public transport buckles under the combined weight of rush hour commuters, city-bound socialisers and massive football crowds; an unholy trinity indeed.

For Jewish fans, of which I am one, there is also the issue of Friday nights being the beginning of the Sabbath, and the setting for those fabled family dinners. I’m not religious myself, but if I’m invited for a meal with family, you can bet it will be on a Friday night, and I don’t want to miss out on those occassions. Often, football dominates the conversation over these meals, but if it replaced them, that would be a big loss for me and many other fans.

Then there’s the footballing tradition. My weekends have revolved around meeting up with family and friends to watch Manchester United since I was a child - yes there are already weeknight games, but there’s something special about the Saturday and Sunday fixtures. And it’s not just about my own experience - not wanting my own routine to change - it’s the sense that I’m walking in the footsteps of my grandfather, who passed away a few years ago, the sense that each time I make my way to watch the team I was raised to love, I’m part of something bigger. It’s a sense of connection with history, of being part of a community, of keeping a tradition alive.

I absolutely celebrate the fact that Man Utd have such incredible global support - it’s amazing that we have so many passionate fans spread around the world - but the growth of football as a global entertainment product should never be at the expense of what made the sport, and Manchester United, the phenomenons that they are.

Author: Joel Stein, Editor of ManchesterLaLaLa.com.