Sunderland boss Sam Allardyce has accused the Premier League of devaluing the FA Cup.<\/p>\n
He said it was “diabolical” that top-flight clubs have league fixtures the Tuesday and Wednesday after this weekend’s third-round ties.<\/p>\n
“Of course I’m going to make changes for our cup tie at Arsenal on Saturday,” Allardyce said.<\/p>\n
“We’re flogging the lads. There are more and more injuries every year, but it’s ignored by the Premier League.”<\/p>\n
Sunderland, second from bottom in the league, are away to Arsenal in the FA Cup on Saturday (15:00 GMT) before they travel to fellow strugglers Swansea on Wednesday, 12 January.<\/p>\n
“If the Premier League decides to put a stupid fixture midweek when they don’t bloody need to, then I haven’t got much choice than to make changes,” said Allardyce.<\/p>\n
“If you want us to respect the FA Cup, don’t put Premier League fixtures in the midweek just after new year.<\/p>\n
“Don’t give me stick when I change the side at Arsenal. Give the Premier League stick, not the managers.”<\/p>\n
Sunderland’s game with Swansea was due to be played on Tuesday but was moved back a day because the Welsh side have an FA Cup tie at Oxford United on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Allardyce was aggrieved by the switch because his side play at Tottenham in a Saturday lunchtime kick-off on 16 January.<\/p>\n
“Making me play Wednesday and Saturday rather than Tuesday and Saturday is making it harder for me to get Premier League points,” he said.<\/p>\n
“With having three away games in succession, we’ve got around 2,000 miles of travel and the lunchtime kick-off means we’ve less than three days recovery for Tottenham.”<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC Sport<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sunderland boss Sam Allardyce has accused the Premier League of devaluing the FA Cup. He said it was “diabolical” that top-flight clubs have league fixtures the Tuesday and Wednesday after this weekend’s third-round ties. “Of course I’m going to make changes for our cup tie at Arsenal on Saturday,” Allardyce said. “We’re flogging the lads. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=179154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=179154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=179154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=179154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}