West Ham United boss David Moyes hopes that the Premier League will not make a regular occurrence of late rescheduling of matches after moving the Hammers’ meeting with Chelsea this weekend with just a week’s notice.
The Hammers had been due to face Chelsea on Sunday afternoon at 2pm at Stamford Bridge. However, the date of the game was bought forward to Saturday, September 3 last Saturday (August 27) with just a week’s notice, with the time of 3pm being announced on Monday afternoon.
The late change was due to Chelsea’s involvement in the group stages of the Champions League, with the Blues heading to Croatia to face Dinamo Zagreb on Tuesday night, leaving West Ham having to play four games in all competitions in the space of nine days between August 25 and September 3.
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Moyes thinks highly of the Premier League’s usual level of organisation but feels that this incident is reminiscent of poor organisation he experienced during his year in La Liga while in charge of Real Sociedad and hopes that the board behind England’s top-flight will not let their standards slip.
“I think it's disappointing because it was known there would be Champions League games and European games for us as well,” said Moyes. “I'll tell you something about the Premier League, they've got a great organisation and in the main these situations don't happen that often.
“When I was fortunate enough to manage in Spain for a year, the one thing that was completely different from the Premier League to La Liga was that the Premier League's organisation was fantastic.
“La Liga was really late with organisation. When was the game going to be? Was it going to be six o'clock at night, ten o'clock at night? Was it going to be Sunday, Monday, what day was it going to be? When I was out there it was the thing that annoyed me a little bit.
“I hope the Premier League are not going like that because I think what the Premier League are is a very well-run organisation which tries to get things right but I think they've got this one wrong. The lateness for the supporters is not correct.”
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