Sam Allardyce would've happily moved Manchester United vs Crystal Palace to help Europa League final chances

Sam Allardyce has confirmed he would've been happy to move Crystal Palace's game with Manchester United to help them in their bid to win the Europa League.

Jose Mourinho's team host the Eagles on the final day of the Premier League season before travelling to Stockholm to face Ajax just three days later.

Mourinho was very critical of the Premier League for not offering to move the game to Saturday to enable United an extra 24 hours to prepare and joked he "good friend" Allardyce would tell Palace to "go slow".

"In any country in the world the match would be Saturday, because Sunday we are sixth, doesn't matter what, and Crystal Palace are safe," Mourinho said post-match.

The Palace manager responded on Thursday: "There's no doubt about that (that the game should have been moved).

"They could easily have changed it last week and said 'We will give you the best chance to try to win the Europa League'.

"It's a great shame that we are not like other countries, who will bend over in fixture terms to help their teams win European competitions. We've all been moaning about the fact we're not getting anywhere near the Champions League or we're not getting anyone winning the Europa League.

"When you look at Jose's fixture list, this will be his 63rd game on Sunday. It's a tremendous effort but no help unfortunately from the Premier League to give him the best chance of winning a trophy that Manchester United haven't won. That would happen abroad. They would change the fixtures for you.

"Because there is nothing on our fixture it is easy to change it. We're not going to influence anything one way or the other in terms of results for ourselves, and it would have been a good gesture by the Premier League to have done it to give them the best chance."

Allardyce is already without Andros Townsend for a fixture Mourinho says will be started by his 20-year-old third-choice goalkeeper Joel Pereira. As he has done recently, the Portuguese again plans to field a weakened XI, saying "I hope you don't kill me when you see my team".

Allardyce was then asked if he would do the same in Mourinho's position, and he said: "No doubt about that. The XI that play at Stockholm would probably not feature at all in this last game.

"It would be wrong for me as a manager to jeopardise anybody that you want to pick for that football match. We all know that injuries happen more in competitive matches than they do in training.

"Having played 62 games, the rest period between now and playing in that game is massive for his team.

"We're going to play the last game with the fittest team we've got. There will be some changes but my team want to play at Old Trafford. They don't want me to leave them out.

"Whether Jose plays a weakened side or not, it will always be a difficult task because if there are younger players at Manchester United, they're definitely talented. It's a job we need to do and hopefully we can go there and do it. The players are looking forward with no pressure on them to go perform on one of the biggest stages in football."

PA