Need help with football fixtures!

[Pippy1820]

Wife of an avid Man Utd fan. OH is turning 40 soon and I plan to bring him as a present for his birthday. Long and short of it, the only match realistic for us is 19th April v Wolves or 10th May v West Ham.

I have no one to help with this so asking here....when are the dates/times confirmed? So far I can see times only confirmed until end of October. Also, would either of these games be classed as 'big games' and played on a Sunday? We will be coming from Ireland so I also have to organise flights and accommodation and don't want to mess it up. I've been very lucky to get someone to agree to take our 3 young kids while we go so can't take the piss with booking a long stay either!

I asked my football-loving husband for advice! (He's a former sports journalist so has lots of experience in this)

So, the games could be moved to any time from Friday night to Monday night, there's no rhyme or reason to it.

The provisional dates for confirming the fixtures and which tv company/channel will be showing them are for the 19 April game, conformation will be between 27 Jan and 28 Feb and for 10 May game it's
24-28 March - you'll have to check the club website for this and they won't put tickets on sale till the dates are confirmed.

Looking at the full league programme for those dates - neither date is crammed with obvious big fixtures that would be automatically picked for tv so it's really hard to tell if MU would be.

Otoh, if you're going for corporate or hospitality you could get that now but still run the risk of the game being moved. But it's still worth checking out the hospitality options early if that was what you were wanting to do for him.

Good luck!

Oh also, if MU get a lengthy European run they'd be playing on the Thursday so the league game would definitely be moved. But since Wolves and West Ham won't be in a lengthy European cup run you won't have to consider whether the game could be moved to accommodate their other matches!

Long and short of it is that it's impossible to say now but planning it now is to your advantage.

If you were planning corporate or hospitality packages you probably need to check the Ts and Cs for moves and refunds etc.

Thank you so much @TragicMuse. That is great info and just what I needed to know. I will hold off booking anything until they confirm and just hope they don't change again! Would make life so easy if they confirm as early as possible, OH is 40 in Feb and plan was to have everything booked for then x

You're welcome!

Mr Muse says you'd lose nothing by emailing the hospitality to make enquiries about it and about waiting lists etc!

If you don't want to worry about the match date being changed etc., how about a hotel stay and a stadium tour instead?

If you do book and it is moved you should get your money back (I know Liverpool did for my Sunday match (this pm)

it won’t be confirmed until March but those dates are before Europa League QF and SF so if Man Utd are still in they will be moved to a Sunday

each team has to have a quota of matches live on Sky and TNT sports so you can’t say whether they will be or not (2pm today is Bournemouth/Newcastle

and I don’t know about Man Utd but if you don’t hurry then it will be all be booked up

Thanks everyone, I'll keep an eye and decide what to do after Christmas.
I can book a refundable hotel, that would be ok, issue here is tickets and flights. Ryanair flights at the moment are roughly €315 and it is very hard to get football tickets so I am looking at €400 for these...its alot of money to lose x