EPL 2007-08 Fixtures

[Laz]

Just two months until the start of the next season!

One question though: last year there were several matches on Sundays, and the Easter weekend had Friday/Saturday/Monday games, plus the Christmas/NewYears holiday medley. This year seems to be mostly Saturdays, a couple of Wednesdays, and no Holiday madness. Anyone know what the reasoning is?

[Yzerman]

whats the EPL?

[Laz]

Originally Posted by Yzerman

whats the EPL?

Oops, my bad for making assumptions. EPL is English Premier League Soccer/Football (ManU, Chelsea, Sunderland, etc).

[Detomah]

I won't start getting excited until I've seen who Keano manages to bring in for Sunderland during this transfer window. We are being rumoured with virtually every available player at the moment, but have only signed one so far, although there's still a fair few weeks to go yet, so gawd knows who we'll end up with.

Our last 2 attempts at the EPL ended in rather embarassing circumstances and 2 unwanted records and I don't think I could handle that kind of thing happening again, although I am hoping for a top 10 spot this time round.

[notsosilentbob]

A lot of the non saturday played games over the last couple of years have been because of the television rights being mostly owned by sky but that is no longer the case with setana sports getting a chunk. Somebody high up somewhere thought we the lovely paying public weren't getting a fair deal with it all being solely owned by sky and having to pay out for satellite tv and then again for pay per view matches so they sold some of the rights over to setana which means we then have to pay another monthly subscription to them if we want to watch their matches! cant see how that worked out better somehow? At least with sky firstplay on saturday night you got to watch extended highlights (about 50 mins) of every premiership match. Personnally i cant see why you cant just get a season ticket for £50 like the old prem plus system but just for your supported team.

[Laz]

But... but... having all the games on Saturday doesn't help TV viewership. The EPL should be maximizing their TV revenue, by having games on as many days/evenings as they can stand. Oh well. Not everyone is as savvy as the NFL.

I wonder what the packages will be in the USA? I get Fox Soccer Channel, which is heavily SkySports, and GolTV which is mostly European, plus a few PPV games. I have DirecTV satellite. Hmmm.

Now if we can just lock up T Henry.

[Kilch]

Apprently on America One, there's a Charlton Athletic TV program haha


Anyway, Toon's first match... Bolton. And ALMOST last game of the season (again for 3rd year in a row) Chelsea, but its second last now.

[Laz]

Originally Posted by Laz

Now if we can just lock up T Henry.

Err, I guess not.

[Detomah]

Originally Posted by Laz

Err, I guess not.

Yeah, shame that one, obviously not so much because I wanted him to stay at Arsenal, with me being a Sunderland fan an all, but because I liked his style and I liked watching him play and that's not going to happen with him now in Spain.

Makes you wonder if that will be the catalyst that sees Arsene Wenger leave Arsenal in the near future too?

[Laz]

Originally Posted by Detomah

I liked his style and I liked watching him play and that's not going to happen with him now in Spain.

According to the interviews, Thierry thinks that Barca plays the closest to the "Arsenal Way", and playing next to Ronaldino should be fun.

Makes you wonder if that will be the catalyst that sees Arsene Wenger leave Arsenal in the near future too?

That was his other concern, that Wenger wouldn't be staying, so why should he.

[Laz]

OK, now I'm really confused. Sky and Satana just posted their TV schedules, and voila! Now there are games on many different days of the week. But they've only scheduled about one-third of the season. Is that normal? Will the schedule continue to evolve as they work through the season?

Over here, the NFL and the TV stations review the schedules before they are published. It was only last year that they started to allow the Sunday prime-time game to be changed to get the best game, and then only for the second half of the season.

Yeah, I know, who really cares

[Detomah]

Yes it's normal, they post the first third of the season as standard, then they decide the juiciest fictures possible after that.

The main reason they only schedule the first third of the season is because they can't properly predict which teams will be near the top or near the bottom of the table right at the start and they don't want to end up showing poor bottom of table none event games until closer to the end of the season where relegation battles become far more important, or games which would be marked as guarenteed boring goaless draws, but they also do it that way to make sure every team has had at least 1 game played on TV during that first period of time, because that is part of their contractual agreement that all 20 top flight clubs get live matches played on TV.

I'm really excited after reading the list for those first matches though, because Sunderland have no less than 7 games scheduled for TV and with me living far too far from Sunderland to get to the games regularly, that is a godsend and something I missed desperately last season.