Never on a Thursday ....well, almost never

It all began with a different, innocent enough, question. Was Jurgen Klopp justified in complaining about having to play in Europe on a Thursday evening and again at home on the following Sunday? He was not alone. Taking advantage of his opponent’s plight, Swansea’s Italian head coach Franscesco Guildolin sympathized, ‘You cannot be ready to play 12pm Sunday when you play Thursday evening in the Europa League. It is impossible.’ Newspaper reporters also lined up alongside him. ‘…with 21 minutes gone, Liverpool looked like a side who had returned from a 5,000-mile round trip to Kazan at 5am on Friday.’ (Times 9 Nov 2015. Liverpool airport had reopened after 1945, so flights could be as direct as possible since our entry into European competitions.) The Guardian observed after the next game at Anfield, ‘As against Crystal Palace a fortnight ago there was a lethargy to Liverpool’s play three days after a Europa League game.’ Ten Hag has recently commented that playing Thursday and Sunday is ‘not easy’. Klopp’s record in six games played on a Sunday, immediately after an away game in Europe on a Thursday, is: won 2, drawn 1, lost 3.

The association of the Thursday-to-Sunday gap with unfortunate consequences has further lowered the attraction of the Europa League, and not helped the start of the Conference League either. The practice started in the same season as the Premier League (1992/93), before which European competitions used Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Since then, ‘Who wants to play in Europe on a Thursday night?’ is the cry, especially of those who have either not progressed in, or tried to justify not playing well enough to qualify for, the competition.

Thursday nights in Europe are once again a reality

However, there are also plenty of arguments against drawing such conclusions. Has Klopp been rotating his teams for the Sunday games to protect his Euro game players, or perhaps to rest them for an important PL or Euro game during the following week? Moreover, there had been few complaints about corresponding Wednesday to Saturday fixtures in the Champions League, and Liverpool’s record in Sunday games immediately following a Thursday evening away in the Europa League, but before Klopp’s era, was: won 16, drawn 7, and lost 7. (Our first Thursday to Sunday experience was away to Spartak Moscow when we beat Norwich 4-1 on the following Sunday.) Nevertheless, dislike of the Thursday to Sunday gap persists, to the extent that many fans see it as such a disadvantage that they would rather miss out on it altogether and concentrate on the Premier League instead (a sentiment probably neither expressed nor supported by the owners).

*

Investigating this problem led me to a surprising conclusion – that there seems to be something very odd and even mysterious about playing professional football on a Thursday. (By a strange coincidence, Sunday was the nemesis of ‘The man who was Thursday’ in G. K. Chesterton’s weird 1909 novel.) This idea sounds too far-fetched to be credible, so let me set out the evidence.

Thursday fixtures for Liverpool have been very rare and, because other clubs are involved, this has to be a national phenomenon. In the 23 seasons between our founding year (1892) and the First World War, we played only nine games on a Thursday, no more than one in any one season (except three in 1898/99. Two of those three were in exceptional circumstances - FA Cup replays which could not have been scheduled in advance and had to rely on the availability of otherwise free weekdays.) Meanwhile, we played 46 games on Mondays, 17 on Wednesdays, and 16 on Fridays.

Between the two world wars, there were only two competitive Thursday matches in the twenty years, and one of those coincided (deliberately?) with the Nottingham Goose Fair in 1925/26. Between that date and 1954/55, including wartime, Liverpool played not a single game on a Thursday. What’s going on? Every other day of the week bar Sunday was used, though Tuesdays weren’t so popular either – understandably, Wednesday was always used the most.

This reluctance to choose Thursdays by the Football League, whose Fixtures Department was then responsible for the thankless task of arranging all fixtures, was quite deliberate – it could hardly have been accidental, and they will tell you that it is in response to requests from the clubs themselves to keep players fit for Saturdays. Long before European competitions started, it is as if Thursday came to be regarded as unholy, to be used only as a last resort when no other day was available. However, the Football League’s explanation does not add up. We are talking about a period when back to back fixtures were commonplace (see ’Back to back fixtures – the rise and fall of supermen’), and four games in five days not unknown – and they still didn’t use Thursdays. While professional football on a Sunday was illegal, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday would have been the most logical weekdays to use, being half way between two Saturdays. Yet they weren’t. From the end of the First World War until our descent into Division 2 in the 1950s, Monday was used 54 times, Friday 19 times, Thursday twice.

Between 1960 and 1986, we even played back to back Friday – Saturday matches five times, determined by the accidental fall of Christmas or Easter.

In the eight seasons we had in Division 2 (1954/55 to 1961/62 inclusive), Thursday flourished, temporarily and only relatively speaking – six times to Monday’s nineteen and Friday’s nine. Admittedly, of those six, we were taking advantage of bank holidays in two – Boxing Day (which was apparently unable to avoid Thursdays!) and Easter.

Liverpool then entered three decades of participation in European competitions, which we associate with Thursday evening matches. In a couple of cases, there was even a Thursday to Saturday gap, but these were against Celtic and Nottingham Forest. Apart from those two, we had no Thursday matches in European competitions before 1992/93.

The Reds were victorious 3-1 against Mypa on a Thursday night

Meanwhile, in the First Division, we played on seven Thursdays at Anfield, and nine away – only sixteen games in the thirty years. Even then, some of the Thursdays were unusual – one was a match that had been postponed, one was a second replay in the FA Cup, another was a third replay, two were on Boxing Days, another on New Year’s Day, leaving only ten normally scheduled league matches – that is, one Thursday game every three years. Furthermore, if this was done to protect the players from a Thursday to Saturday short gap, why did they allow Friday to Saturday (back to back) games in 1964/65, 1967/68 (followed by Monday – three games in four days), 1975/76, 1980/81, and 1986/87? There have been no such fixtures during the Premier League period. The two day gap, from which players were supposedly protected, was quite common during the last three decades of the old Division1 – Saturday to the following Monday occurred 77 times, a practice that continued with fifteen instances between 1992/3 and 2005/06, though only two since.

By the start of the Premier League era, Sunday fixtures had become commonplace, normally into double figures for a season, with a total of twenty (almost a third of all LFC’s matches played) during 2015/16. Over half were a consequence of playing Thursday to Sunday in European competition. Meanwhile, away from Europe, Thursdays have remained rare, perhaps one in every two years until 2020/21 – and three were on Boxing Days and a New Year’s Day. If we exclude games during Covid, it is more like one in three seasons again.

There are many considerations taken into account when the process of agreeing an annual fixture list is undertaken, probably the most important being advice from the police concerning crowd control outside the stadium. Imagine the mayhem if, in two games on the same Saturday, the fans of Liverpool, Everton, Manchester United and Manchester City were in town. Even the routes taken by supporters of clubs not necessarily in the same division, and not playing each other, will be weighed in the balance, with the dates of fixtures rearranged after earlier drafts if deemed desirable. The process is far too complicated for humans, the job being allocated to computers fed on a diet of appropriate algorithms. It is done in early summer, once the clubs involved in promotion and relegation are decided, of course.

And here we have the final mystery of this Thursday saga. Suppose there were no fans to consider. The pressure on the system would be considerably eased, relieving the computer of the necessity of allocating unpopular days like Thursday which appear to have been the ‘last resort’ day of the week. Those four clubs in the last paragraph could play on the same day in the same city.

Well, despite being the cause of personal tragedy on a huge scale, Covid has once again provided an opportunity for research. Almost all games after 11/3/2020 until near the end of 2020/21 had a nil attendance recorded. During that time, no fewer than seven Thursday games are found, the first on the second of July soon after the crowd ban was introduced. Two League Cup games and four in the Premier League were played during 2020/21. Five more followed during the next season, but there has been none since 10 February, 2022. Covid unarguably altered all our lives, whether directly or otherwise, but why did it wake Thursday from its slumbers? No explanation has been forthcoming from the Premier League. Any ideas?

Article by Dr. Colin Rogers for LFChistory.net

Other articles by Dr. Rogers