The busy Christmas schedule tends to bring teamsheet carnage, with quick turnaround times and fatigue leading to injuries and rotation.
Not helping the situation is the unpredictability of team news.
Press conferences can happen after the Fantasy Premier League (FPL) deadlines over the festive season, or they may take the form of embargoed sections filmed in the aftermath of the previous fixture. This is not ideal for the latest injury news, as Premier League managers will likely not be able to tell us much anew.
So, then, let’s have a Gameweek-by-Gameweek look at what we can expect over Christmas and New Year. The deadline times are in GMT.
GAMEWEEK 18
Despite Christmas Day being in the way, Gameweek 18 is probably our best bet for team news over the next four Gameweeks.
It’s a relatively big run-up to the Boxing Day deadline, with little midweek action, so we’re expecting a lot of Premier League managers to face the media this week.
Arne Slot, David Moyes, Nuno Espirito Santo and Eddie Howe are among those already pencilled in for Tuesday, with the full list to come tomorrow.
And Christmas Eve is usually no barrier to the hosting of press conferences. Last year, we had eight ‘live’ pressers taking place (and some embargoed quotes) on December 24. That followed on from the 10 we had on December 23.
Ruben Amorim is among the managers due to face the media on Christmas Eve this year.
There might be exceptions. We already know that Pep Guardiola won’t do a press conference for Gameweek 18, although he’ll “do TV instead”. That’ll likely be a one-on-one interview, which we’ve seen in the past, and he may still get asked about team news in that.
With Arsenal and Crystal Palace clashing in the EFL Cup tomorrow, Mikel Arteta and Oliver Glasner may choose to do their Gameweek 18 pressers after full-time in that cup tie. If so, quotes will then be embargoed until closer to next weekend.
We’ve even got the bulk of Boxing Day (the deadline being a much later 18:30 GMT) to mop up any late-arriving quotes.
The downside to all this? The press conferences will happen so early in the week. How much can Messrs Slot, Moyes et al tell us about squad fitness for a game four days away? There’s also a chance of injuries happening in between; there’s much less risk of that when a pre-match presser is one day before a game.
Still, any press conference is better than none – as we’re about to discuss.
GAMEWEEK 19
Now, the problematic Gameweeks.
Gameweek 19 was a mess on the team news front last season, with this year looking similar.
The biggest issues could be injury updates for the eight teams below, who all play on New Year’s Day:
The deadline for Gameweek 19 is on December 30, which will likely be before the managers of the above eight clubs have faced the media.
Even the managers of the dozen sides that play on deadline day (seen below) might simply do their Gameweek 19 pressers straight after full-time in Gameweek 18 (this happened a lot in 2024/25).
So, the ‘latest’ FPL team news might be in short supply this Gameweek.
GAMEWEEK 20
Gameweek 20 might, again, be a hotchpotch of embargoed quotes and actual ‘live’ press conferences. Unlike Gameweek 19, however, it’s probable we’re going to hear from most/all of the managers pre-deadline.
It’s a Saturday deadline, so we’ll probably get the usual pre-match pressers (mostly Friday, as Thursday is New Year’s Day) from some of the dozen sides who were in action on December 30 (Arsenal, Aston Villa, Bournemouth, Brighton, Burnley, Chelsea, Everton, Man Utd, Newcastle, Nottm Forest, West Ham and Wolves).
The eight sides that played on New Year’s Day (Brentford, C Palace, Fulham, Leeds, Liverpool, Man City, Sunderland and Spurs) are the biggest uncertainties. Expect most of those managers to take questions straight after full-time in Gameweek 19, with quotes embargoed till Friday.
The 2022/23 campaign is the closest thing we can find to the December 30-January 3 turnaround this season. Very few standalone pressers took place then.
GAMEWEEK 21
Some semblance of normality may resume for the below midweek games. Press conferences for West Ham and Nottm Forest on Monday, the majority of the rest of the division on Tuesday. That’s the theory, anyway.
The problem child is Arsenal v Liverpool on Thursday. Mikel Arteta and Arne Slot may be facing the media on Wednesday 7 January, which is a day after the Gameweek 21 deadline.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Long story short: get those benches in order! A couple of low-cost playing substitutes, like Omar Alderete (£4.0m) and Joe Rodon (£4.1m), could come in very handy over Christmas.
They may be needed, with some clubs leaving us in the dark as to their latest team news in Gameweeks 19-21 and the press conferences taking place very early in Gameweek 18.
Take Liverpool as an example. There’s a good chance we won’t get any team news from Arne Slot in Gameweek 19 or 21, while Gameweek 20 may just be embargoed quotes, of little use, from post-match on New Year’s Day.
Let the bedlam begin…
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