When you are a top club coming to the end of a season it is not unusual to find yourselves in multiple competitions all squeezed into an ever decreasing time frame and that certainly applies to Arsenal right now.
We are currently playing every three to four days and that is not going to slow down any time soon and to give you some context this is our schedule over the next couple of weeks.
Sunday 21st April Crystal Palace
Wednesday 24th April Wolves
Sunday 28th April Leicester City
Thursday 2nd May Valencia
Sunday 5th May Brighton
Thursday 9th May Valencia
Sunday 12th May Burnley
But Emery will not be using tiredness as an excuse whatever happens and speaking specifically about the game with Crystal Palace and the fact that it is played just three days after we played away in Italy the Spaniard said: “I didn’t use this excuse in my career”
“I worked a lot in similar situations in France and Spain. Here, we came back last night at three o’clock and we came in this morning at 10am. But really, today I am coming here with a small smile because the players worked very well and gave me confidence for Sunday”
“The players who didn’t play yesterday, today after this travel, they were working good and with the focus for Sunday and knowing that today in training, some players are going to play Sunday”
“After the last match, some players need to rest or to do a rotation with them, or with one player like Aaron Ramsey, he is injured. Also, Sokratis continues to be suspended. But this is the spirit I want. Like this morning, after the travelling yesterday. How we trained this morning and how we can have confidence to use players against Crystal Palace”
Fair enough and to be honest the same applies to Tottenham and to some extent Chelsea but no so much Man Utd.
What is annoying though is that the foreign leagues do take steps to mitigate game congestion and assist their teams in rearranging fixtures so they are as fresh as possible for their respective European matches, we do not get that assistance or luxury from our footballing authorities, well, not in the same way they do in the other big European Leagues.