By virtue of their 1-0 victory over Brian McDermott’s Reading this evening, Man City have provided the first real body blow to the fixture list following on from this weekend’s FA Cup action.
Roberto Mancini’s side now have a date with bitter rivals Manchester United at Wembley on the weekend of gameweek 33 (April 16/17) which means that their current fixture at home to Tottenham on said weekend is set to fall by the wayside for at least a week…
Fellow qualifiers Bolton, Manchester United and Stoke will also suffer the same fate and see their weekend fixture (vs Fulham, Newcastle and Wolves respectively) knocked off the calendar. In their situation there is a very strong case -but we cannot take it as read until official confirmation comes in- for their postponed matches to take place in the same gameweek and alongside the already scheduled midweek games of Chelsea vs Birmingham and Arsenal vs Tottenham, as has happened in previous seasons.
It is that aforementioned North London derby that also means Manchester City clearly cannot rearrange their game with Spurs for the same time. This means that Mancini’s men will now have a blank fixture in gameweek 33 and Redknapp’s double-header has now been pegged back to just a single game at home to Arsenal.
Rough planners can pencil in gameweek 36 (the only free midweek left this season without any European commitments) as a likely time for the fixture to now take place but, again, must be aware this is our educated guess and when we get official word on a date we will share it post haste.
Season Tickers will be updated shortly to represent this change to the schedule.
