Premier League reschedule Arsenal game 37 days after confirming they wouldn’t | OneFootball

Arsenal’s Premier League match against Everton has been rescheduled, 37 days after the competition officially confirmed it would not be rescheduled.

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On Friday afternoon, Arsenal and the Premier League confirmed that the upcoming match between the Gunners and Everton has been rescheduled from 14:00 GMT on Sunday, March 15th to a new date of Saturday, March 14th. The game will now kick off at 17:30 GMT.

The explanation given is that Arsenal are scheduled to face Bayer Leverkusen in the second leg of their Champions League last-16 tie on Tuesday, March 17th. Playing Sunday-Tuesday would be too much, so the Everton match has been moved to Saturday.

These fixture alterations are relatively common, particularly for clubs in European competition. But the issue in this case is that the Premier League had officially and publicly confirmed that this would not happen.

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The Premier League confirmed on January 21st – over a month ago – that the Arsenal-Everton clash would take place on March 15th, with no asterisks or warning that this might turn out not to be the case.

The competition organisers usually add a note to any games that might need to move depending on other competitions. They did so with five other matches in that January 21st statement. But they specifically didn’t do so in this case.

As a result, many fans had already bought tickets and booked travel and accommodation based on the league’s official guarantee.

The Premier League did not apologise to those fans in their statement on Friday, despite potentially costing them hundreds of pounds with their incompetence.

Photo by Matt McNulty/Getty Images

This scheduling issue was known to some fans weeks ago, with many on social media questioning the decision to unreservedly guarantee the timing before the Champions League draw was known.

At the time, it was believed that the Premier League must have received some guarantees from UEFA that Arsenal would play on the following Wednesday (and thus be able to play on Sunday).

UEFA clearly never provided any such guarantee, and the Premier League’s arrogance that they would be able to push through the schedule they wanted has left matchgoing fans paying the price.