Arsenal Ladies had been scheduled to face Bayern Munich in an important Champions League sport on the Emirates subsequent month however will probably must relocate because of the clashes with the lads’s calendar.
The group-stage sport had been slated for a 20:00 GMT kick-off on the Emirates subsequent month, because the facet look to turn out to be the primary English crew to carry the trophy because it was renamed and relaunched in 2009.
The north London facet did win the older iteration of the competitors, the UEFA Ladies’s Cup, within the 2006/07 season.
Why Arsenal Ladies might have to maneuver their Champions League fixture to accommodate the lads
The membership had been promoting tickets for the Bayern conflict since September, envisaging the sport to be held on the Emirates, with the venue being announced as the main home of Arsenal Women earlier this 12 months.
That made for a headache this week, as their males’s facet had been drawn to face Crystal Palace at dwelling within the Carabao Cup quarter-final, with 18 December the one date out there to the guy London facet.
Because of taking part in televised video games the earlier Sunday and the next Saturday, the Eagles can solely play on that Wednesday whereas nonetheless permitting for 2 relaxation days in between every sport.
BBC Sport revealed that Arsenal are taking a look at various venues for the ladies’s sport, together with final season’s major dwelling venue, Meadow Park in Borehamwood — though conversations are ongoing because the venue shouldn’t be believed to satisfy all of UEFA’s necessities.
Meadow Park, 12 miles north of the Emirates, can be the house of non-league males’s facet Borehamwood and may maintain round 4500 spectators.
In distinction, Arsenal Ladies averaged around 31000 fans in attendance for his or her Ladies’s Tremendous League video games at one stage final season, many held on the Emirates, together with their record-breaking 60050 tickets bought for his or her assembly with rivals Tottenham Hotspur. It has not been made public what number of tickets have already been bought for the upcoming Bayern sport, however Forbes reported their perception that the determine stood at someplace near 7500.
VIDEO Why Man United Wished Ruben Amorim So Badly
It’s clear to FourFourTwo that the conflict makes for an especially uncomfortable place for Arsenal, who shall be solely too conscious of the optics of shifting an important ladies’s Champions League fixture for the lads to face off within the Carabao Cup — one thing you probably wouldn’t see taking place the opposite approach spherical.
Nonetheless, there isn’t a clear route to maintain all people blissful. According to Forbes, EFL Cup guidelines state golf equipment should nominate their stadiums earlier than the competitors begins, ruling out a venue swap for the lads, and UEFA guidelines state that every one video games within the ultimate spherical of group-stage video games within the Champions League should kick off on the identical time, denying a double-header.
It is a troublesome state of affairs, however with a calendar famend for fixture congestion — and two groups liable to go deep into competitions — one which Arsenal executives maybe ought to have foreseen, with a clearly communicated contingency plan in place from the beginning.
