The punishing run of matches up to this international break meant managers had no time to adjust when results soured
Monday was the 81st day of the year, and just the 10th on which none of the 20 English top-flight clubs played a game. The previous day without any fixtures in the Premier League, FA Cup, Carabao Cup, Champions League or Europa League was 5 March, 16 consecutive football-filled days earlier. Other than Fridays, of which six out of 12 have so far been clear of top-level football, the total number of days off in 2021 has been two. Essentially, if you are the type of football fan who likes to stay on top of the sport at the highest level, both domestically and in Europe, it is just as well that you have been in effect banned from leaving your house since Christmas because you would have been tethered to your television anyway.
If this season has always felt like a constant stream of soccer, the sense that we were dealing with an unusual quantity of matches was illusory at first. Between 1 October and 1 January there were 127 Premier League games, slightly down from 129 in the same period of 2019-20 and 130 in 2018-19, but they were unusually spread out to allow every top-flight fixture to be televised domestically, giving the impression that there were always scores to check, highlights to watch, fantasy league lineups to tweak.
