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Football schedules are forever subject to the whimsies of television, and thanks to the all-powerful gods of Sky, Chelsea fans are now faced with a bit of a traveling nightmare. The Manchester City home game moves to a Sunday - no big deal there, but Blackpool away moves to Monday March 7th at 8PM, a far cry from its original mid-Saturday time slot. With Blackpool a mere 240 miles from London, it's no wonder that the schedulers were ok with moving the game. After all, driving up to the northwest of England from the capital will only take... oh, about four and a bit hours, so if fans leave work early, they can watch the game and get back by 2 or 3 in the morning. Perfect!
This isn't the only annoying weekday game up north coming up - Chelsea have a Monday trip to Bolton to look forward to this week, and then have to make a Tuesday trek to Sunderland eight days later. Oh, and there's the FA Cup game against Everton at Goodison Park in between.
All in all, it's a pretty obnoxious travelling schedule, and I feel bad for the fans that it effects. Clearly, you can't please everyone, but I really don't understand how moving games from at least plausibly travel-able weekend fixtures demonstrates a total lack of understanding for our support. The Premier League understands where the money comes from, though (and goodness knows I can't follow Chelsea without the television) - I just think it would be nice if they didn't do obviously malevolent things like this.
Chelsea at Blackpool is now scheduled for March 7th, 8 PM GMT, while Chelsea vs. Manchester City is now going to be held on March 20th at 4PM. For the entire fixture list, please visit the Chelsea official site.