Wenger wants better tv deal
Live domestic rights to top-flight English games for 2010-13 raised a total of £1.782bn, while overseas income from 212 countries amounted to £1.4bn, a major increase on previous contracts.
Such staggering income, however, comes at a cost, with member clubs now facing regular altered schedules as the traditional weekend slots now stretch through from a Friday night across to Monday evening. Wenger feels the governing body must do more to limit the impact those changes have on clubs throughout the league —with the recent drawn-out festive fixtures a case in point.
“The Premier League should master the fixtures. It can’t happen every year that some clubs have advantages in relation to just the fairness of the competition,” said the Arsenal manager, who takes his team to Swansea tomorrow.
“If I fight with you in a 100 metres run and you have to run the semi-final on Sunday morning and run against me on Sunday afternoon and I have a run on Friday morning, is that fair or not? It is not. That is what I say. The responsibility of the Premier League is to make sure Premier League fixtures are better distributed.”
The Arsenal boss continued: “If tomorrow, you buy a club and your best friend is the owner of Sky TV, you don’t think you will tell him: “look, you put us on Friday night. That is not fair,’ or ‘you put us on Sunday night, that is not fair’?”
Changes to games are, however, not just dependent on television, with many factors weighed in such as policing and travel issues. The schedules, though, are the major factor for congestion and have a knock-on effect.
Arsenal’s FA Cup fourth-round tie against Aston Villa has been scheduled for Sunday January 29, live at 4pm, which in turn led to the next week’s Premier League fixture at Bolton being pushed back to Wednesday February 1, and then the Gunners host Blackburn at 1pm on Saturday February 4 — a game brought forward by two hours because of engineering works on the London Underground network.
Rivals Manchester City, who will have played at Everton on the Tuesday evening, host Fulham at 5.30pm on the Saturday, while Chelsea and Manchester United clash at Stamford Bridge on Sunday, February 5 and then Tottenham are at Liverpool for Monday night’s live game — almost a full week after their previous league game. Wenger, however, insists when it is just down to which matches are selected to be shown live, more can be done to even the distribution.
“If the Premier League doesn’t decide, it is the television that decides. Okay? That means that television can be influenced and the Premier League has nothing to say. That’s what, basically, I think is not right,” he said.
“The Premier League has the organisation of the fixtures, yet they don’t have it because the television has got it. You can say to me: ‘Well, you sold your games’ and you are right, but, if you look at the competition being fair or not, if you do not master the fixtures any more you have no control of your league.”
Wenger, meanwhile, has revealed he could throw Arsenal’s former captain Thierry Henry straight in alongside current skipper Robin van Persie against the Swans.
Henry came off the bench to net the winning goal as Leeds were beaten 1-0 in the FA Cup on Monday night.
“Thierry is ready to start a game like he was ready to start against Leeds,” said the Arsenal boss. “The most important thing is that he helps the team to win games and the way he does it. I cannot tell you what will happen on Sunday.’’
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