Season 2020-2021 to start on August 7th only joking. On a serious note I think DTLW’s dates mean 2 midweek fixtures if all others are on weekends. More of weekends get freed up for FA Cup etc
Yeah, the games in hand will all be settled on June 17 before the season restarts with a full round of fixtures on June 19/20, so that if PPG does have to come into play later in the season, every team would have finished with an equal amount of games played.
I believe the plan is for games to be played home and away, but with the government retaining the right to instruct governing bodies to play any crunch matches at neutral grounds if there are serious concerns around congregation of supporters for that fixture.
Unless a match has to be postponed one week ala Germany. Makes sense to start with City and Arsenal though, the lack of crowd noise won't be noticeable.
I think Moussa Djenepo will forever go in the record books for longest 3 match ban served when he received the red card in the same season.
Live PL matches on BBC (even though it's just the four) will be a little surreal. 16 matches per week, assuming that all 16 slots are used each week and only one match is played at a time. (Other than for the final round of fixtures.)
Essentially that equates to the extra matches which they've been awarded. They had something like 35, maybe 40, matches to show this season. That's now jumped up to 64, thanks to all the other matches being shown on TV. So whilst Sky might portray it as them "making" games free to air, I suspect it was a condition of them getting an increase to 64 matches. 64 on Sky and 4 on BBC, leaves 24 more to be shared between BT and Amazon (including the 8ish which were already on BT).
The maths would support that. 5 weeks of 16 matches is 80 matches. Plus the 2 games in hand to start off with. Plus a full round of 10 matches to then finish with.
Assuming fans won't be allowed at games for at least part of next season it will be interesting to see what the broadcasters and the PL do then.
Possible that I'm being unfair on Sky. BT will get 20 matches, but there's no sign that their 12 new ones will be free to air. Instead, BT are offering a 50% discount to subscribers. So that's a better deal than Sky's position for existing (or new) customers, but a worse deal for non-customers.