Former Chelsea striker complains Premier League have "caved in" to Blues' demands after exceptional trip

12/13/2024 10:00 AM

Former Chelsea striker Chris Sutton is in charge of the BBC's predictions column this year, and Blues fans will be happy to hear that he's backed his former team to beat Brentford on Sunday night, 2-1.

But as usual Sutton has found something to moan about – in this case, the moving of the fixture to the lesser spotted Sunday 7pm slot.

The reasoning is obvious: Chelsea played in Kazakhstan yesterday evening, and only arrived back in London around 6am this morning. Enzo Maresca's team will presumably have today off, then will do just a short preparation session tomorrow, with the game the following day.

Sutton isn't happy about it:

"It will be odd for fans to have a game starting so late on a Sunday night, but the Premier League have caved in to teams who want a bit of extra rest after playing in Europe on Thursday," he wrote.

"I am not sure the Premier League have thought this through, and they might have opened a can of worms here… the Premier League probably need to come up with a minimum time period that teams should have between games, and stick to it."

Chelsea should be ultra-fresh despite team's long trip

It seems perfectly reasonable that teams should get this little bit of extra time to help after such an exceptional trip around the world in midweek. Of course it's a slightly false issue on Chelsea's end because of the team they picked to face Astana – not only will we have a fully different XI on Sunday, but there will in fact only be a couple of players in the entire squad who made the journey.

Yes there's been limited chances to train, and the coaching staff all had to go with the team, but still. You know what… maybe Sutton does have a point after all!