New Date for Manchester United vs. Liverpool Remains Uncertain

A day after Liverpool’s northwest derby match against Manchester United was postponed due to United fans protesting the club’s ownership, we still don’t know for certain when—or even if—the match will take place.

The one certainty now is that the game won’t be played this week despite early talk of the match simply being pushed to Monday evening. If that ever was a realistic possibility, the timeframe for making that call has now passed.

The result is an overcrowded fixture list for United that makes it difficult to see where the game can reasonably be fit due to that club’s European commitments and the looming end of an already compressed season.

As of today, based on a number of reports, the likeliest option may be to reschedule the game for two weeks from now, to Sunday, May 16th. Doing so would require Liverpool’s game against West Brom to be pulled forward.

The reason for doing so is United’s continuing presence in Europe. Because of it, their schedule appears to have less wiggle room than Liverpool’s, and that is the one date when rearranged fixture appears viable for them.

Meanwhile, suggestions the game could be played after the season ends are considered a non-starter, and that’s without even taking into account that United will likely be playing in the Europa League final.

United fans have been protesting the ownership of the Glazers, who loaded debt onto the club when they initially acquired it and are now widely viewed by the fans as absentee owners at best, for more than a decade now.

Sunday’s showing of unhappiness with them, though, was the furthest they’ve pushed their dissent, seemingly driven to it by the combination of a decade of ignored demands and the owners’ recent Super League debacle.

Their situation, and that unhappiness with the owners, is something Liverpool fans should understand well and have sympathy for given their own club’s recent ownership at the hands of Tom Hicks and George Gillett.