It’s a big weekend in the Women’s Super League too and Manchester City can move closer to the title with a home win over Liverpool tomorrow, though they have been wobbling lately. Their main challengers, Arsenal, are otherwise engaged – in WCL semi-final action against OL Lyonnes.

But as the season draws to an end, fixture scheduling remains a sore point in the women’s game, as Tom Garry reports:

Waiting for men’s broadcast picks, dodging local fun runs and even having to avoid clashing with nearby comedy gigs: welcome to the quagmire of trying to arrange the Women’s Super League and WSL 2 schedule.

The fixture list is often a bone of contention for supporters, and organisers face a painstaking task in trying to organise games in venues where other teams get first dibs.

“Stadium availability is led by the men’s game and then broadcast is led by the men’s game, so it can be really hard,” Zarah Al-Kudcy, chief revenue officer at WSL Football, says. “Some of the reasons we are given as to why fixtures have to change, you just have to laugh or you’d cry.”