‘No excuses’ from Chelsea boss ahead of Liverpool trip
Chelsea boss Antonio Conte has insisted he would not blame any bad result at Liverpool on his side’s draining week – despite again criticising the Premier League and BT Sport for the scheduling of the game.
The Blues have had just a single day of preparation for Saturday’s 5.30pm kick-off, after making an 11-hour round trip to Baku in midweek for the Champions League win over Qarabag.
They arrived back in London in the early hours of Thursday morning, having also had to contend with an aborted landing at Gatwick Airport due to heavy wind.
Conte said: “To get to your house at 6am is not simple – then to rest and recover [and have] only one day to prepare for a big game, I think this is not right, I must be honest.
“But we have to do this and we had a good training session. We tried to prepare very well for the game against Liverpool.
“This week was an intensive week for us but at the same time it’s right I don’t find alibis or excuses.”
BT Sport’s selected fixtures are always shown in the Saturday tea-time slot and they submitted their picks to the Premier League in mid-July, more than a month before the Champions League group-stage draw was made.
This leaves little flexibility to assist English teams in Europe and Conte remains unhappy about the short preparation time.
“This is the not the first time,” he said, referring to the Blues playing Manchester City at the same time slot having played Atletico Madrid the previous Wednesday.
“I think that they [the Premier League and TV companies] have to pay more attention and try to give the possibility to teams to recover in the right way, in the same way, and not to try and create the problems for only one team.”
