RedRover
Full Member
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2007
- Messages
- 8,955
Is it? Traveling a couple of hours away late Friday (presumably after some light training) and staying in a 5 star hotel over night?Istanbul is a 4.5hr flight from Manchester. Our game with Istanbul Basaksehir would have finished at around Thursday 1am local time. To then jump on a four hour flight home and then the very next day be on the coach to Liverpool for a tough away game is asking a lot from the players.
That's 1 day of rest/training, then asked to play, not only on a Saturday, but an early kick off. It was absurd and I'm glad to see that Klopp had something to say about it too.
EDIT: Also the players should be receiving all of the empathy for the unprecedented situation that we are in. Without the players the greedy broadcasters have nothing to show. So it isn't in their best interest to run them into the ground.
I keep saying this but Europa League teams play Thursday - sometimes in places very difficult to get to and then play again at 3 on Sunday. That is standard and United have done it regularly over the last few seasons. So actually, factoring that in we're arguing over 2 and 1/2 hours.
I'll ask you - are we saying United should get special treatment over Europa League clubs? Is it absurd that they don't?
Your last point I partially agree with and partially don't. On the one hand, players have had hardly any rest post lockdown. However, the "greedy" broadcasters are the major reason they get 10 times more in salary than players did 15-20 years ago (and rightly so). I suspect the bulk of those players were happy to rely on their contractual benefits during lockdown, including continuing to get paid, and as such, I'm not sure it's all that unreasonable to expect them to fulfil their contractual obligations now.