EXTRA TIME

Mid-term holidays for PL players

November 10, 2019 at 7:40 pm Leave a comment

This season will be the first in which the Premier League will have the new annual mid-season player break in February which has been agreed by FA, Premier League and English Football League. So if you’re planning to watch one of the games scheduled for the weekend of 8 February 2020, you will have to wait until fixture changes for five of these matches have been announced.

The two-week break will take place from February 8th to 15th, 2020. The break has been structured to make sure that PL games are played every weekend. Each weekend during the break will feature five Premier League matches on the first weekend and five on the following weekend. This will work by splitting one gameweek across two weekends.

As it is not a complete time-out for England‘s first division and will not be observed by the lower leagues, it’s called “mid-season player break”, not “winter break”. In contrast to the international breaks in which no PL games are played, during the winter break football fans are ensured that Premier League matches will be played every weekend. Which games, including West Ham’s away game against Manchester City, will be moved is yet to be decided.

In order to help with the implementation of the break the FA agreed to move FA Cup fifth-round matches, which traditionally occurred in mid February, to mid-week at the beginning of March.

The timing of the break means that the traditional English festive football schedule remains intact. But now it is even more difficult to plan a February weekend trip to a Premier League game: maybe the match you‘re interested in will be shifted to the following weekend.

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