Tottenham v. Leicester to proceed on Saturday, with three Premier League matches postponed

Good news, everybody! Hours after the Football Association announced its plans to resume playing football managers in the wake of Queen Elizabeth II’s death, the Premier League has followed suit. The league issued a statement saying that games will resume for matchweek 8, but that two of them — Man United v. Leeds, Chelsea v. Liverpool — will be postponed for policing reasons and a third — Brighton vs. Crystal Palace — will remain postponed due to the effects of a proposed rail strike.

This is probably good news for Spurs. It’s going to be difficult enough to reschedule the postponed match at Manchester City, and trying to throw another one into the mixer when they’re expecting to go far in four competitions feels daunting. Postponing Manchester United vs. Leeds feels weird as the Queen’s funeral is taking place hundreds of miles away in London, but the justification was that a lot of Manchester area police are being redeployed on that weekend to provide security with potentially millions of people arriving for the state funeral. (Apropos of nothing, this would seem to make it a very good time to commit a crime if you live in Manchester, but you didn’t hear it from me.)

United face similar fixture congestion concerns as Tottenham do and it’s an open question as to how they’re going to be able to get two matches in elsewhere, but there’s some suggestion that they may get around this by canceling replays in the FA Cup fourth round in February.

But as of now there’s absolutely zero margin remaining in the fixture schedule. Should anything else happen, i.e. another COVID surge, etc., that would necessitate the postponement of matches, I’m not sure what the Premier League will do.

Tottenham kick off on Saturday in the late match — 12:30 p.m. ET (NBC) / 5:30 p.m. BST (Sky Sports).