December is hard enough on teams in the Conference League. It is even worse if you do well in the EFL Cup, as Crystal Palace are about to discover.
The expanded European calendar means the final two rounds of the Conference League are played on consecutive Thursdays with Palace away to Shelbourne on 11 December and at home to Finnish side KuPS seven days later.
But this is only part of the story for Palace, fifth in the Premier League. They face 11 games, six of them away, in the 36-day period between 30 November and 4 January. Their longest rest period is five days, the worst schedule of all clubs.
Palace have an EFL Cup quarter-final tie at Arsenal to play, a game originally scheduled for the midweek of the KuPS fixture.
It has been pushed to Tuesday, 23 December and as part of the rejig, Palace’s game with Leeds was brought forward 24 hours to Saturday, 20 December.
They now must play KuPS and Leeds within 48 hours, before their cup tie with Arsenal.
Over a gruelling five-week period, they will have played Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Tottenham and Newcastle.
