Could they void the PL due to the Coronavirus? | No | Resuming June 17th

Fox_Chrys said:
The problem I have is this.

Most people are either still working, or are furloughed with reduced pay.

Players are been protected but also still getting full pay. Which doesn't sit right with me, even though its in their contracts.
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If Aguero genuinely is that scared he could ask Man City to furlough him?

He is fortunate enough to be in a position where he can retire at 31 and never need to work if he doesn't need to.
 
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Fox_Chrys said:
The problem I have is this.

Most people are either still working, or are furloughed with reduced pay.

Players are been protected but also still getting full pay. Which doesn't sit right with me, even though its in their contracts.
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Why would clubs having a bit more money and players having a bit less make any difference to you at all?
 
Offside said:
A few games behind closed doors is fair enough but the final quarter of the season? I suppose you can live with it but it’s really shit. I read some bollocks today about the whole of next season being behind closed doors which would kill the sport. Football should not continue unless you can be sure crowds will return within a reasonable time-frame. The game is nothing without fans. At the moment I’d say Premier League games of 50k+ people all in a single place at once may not be feasible for at least half a year if not longer. That can change quickly but whatever.

My interest for the rest of the season will drop massively due to this even though I appreciate the compromise and obviously it didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of what’s going on in the world.
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This is idealism and makes the common fan mistake of not acknowledging professional football as a business. Everyone needs to trade at some point, including football clubs. If given the option no teams want to play in empty stadiums! It’s obviously something that is only being considered on the basis that safety and business are both important, hence finding the best medium.
 
Wibble said:
It was worded as a possible answer to your question. I've edited to make it clearer.
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I thought my question was rhetorical, on the basis that everyone should agree that we shouldn’t just lock our doors for a year unless we sell food. Society will resume, with precaution, and steps taken to mitigate risk.

People will go back to work. In fact, many people in this country never stopped going to work, and I doubt they are considered acceptable to ‘die unnecessarily’. This is just the newest risk that will need to be managed at a stadium, and having 300 people in a stadium instead of 75,000 is quite a drastic risk-reducing step to me.
 
Rozay said:
I thought my question was rhetorical, on the basis that everyone should agree that we shouldn’t just lock our doors for a year unless we sell food. Society will resume, with precaution, and steps taken to mitigate risk.

People will go back to work. In fact, many people in this country never stopped going to work, and I doubt they are considered acceptable to ‘die unnecessarily’. This is just the newest risk that will need to be managed at a stadium, and having 300 people in a stadium instead of 75,000 is quite a drastic risk-reducing step to me.
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Maybe at some point but if sport continues/resumes it should be fan free until a vaccine is found and distributed (or Covid is eliminated from a country and the borders remain sealed)
 
Wibble said:
Maybe at some point but if sport continues/resumes it should be fan free until a vaccine is found and distributed (or Covid is eliminated from a country and the borders remain sealed)
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Yea for sure, I thought the entire conversation was about resuming without fans. I thought the concern was that the 300 people required were practically being sent to the slaughter by being asked to go to the stadium, which I think is a massive exaggeration.

If proposals go ahead as planned, a football stadium will literally be one of the only places in the country that you can be in with the knowledge that everyone else in there has tested negative a couple of days ago.
 
Rozay said:
Yea for sure, I thought the entire conversation was about resuming without fans. I thought the concern was that the 300 people required were practically being sent to the slaughter by being asked to go to the stadium, which I think is a massive exaggeration.

If proposals go ahead as planned, a football stadium will literally be one of the only places in the country that you can be in with the knowledge that everyone else in there has tested negative a couple of days ago.
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Those 300 have to travel to and from the stadium and if Covid gets into the group it has a huge potential to start a large new cluster of infection.

Australia is down to a handful of new cases per day with some states on zero new infections for a few days now and only 1 example of community transmission from an unknown source. Even so there are nerves about starting the NRL behind closed doors in a month's time. IMO you need the virus to have been almost eliminated before taking unnecessary risks like starting sport up again.
 
Wibble said:
Those 300 have to travel to and from the stadium and if Covid gets into the group it has a huge potential to start a large new cluster of infection.

Australia is down to a handful of new cases per day with some states on zero new infections for a few days now and only 1 example of community transmission from an unknown source. Even so there are nerves about starting the NRL behind closed doors in a month's time. IMO you need the virus to have been almost eliminated before taking unnecessary risks like starting sport up again.
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I think that’s fair, but also has a lot to do with how people view sports. It shows in every situation, including this one, that the general public view footballers as a bunch of lucky millionaires who don’t deserve their money and should pretty much shut up at a time like this as nobody cares what they think. In reality, football or ‘sport’ isn’t as ‘unnecessary’ as people make out. It may not be as necessary as hospitals and supermarkets, but it is no less necessary than most other jobs. The 300 people you speak of are not all millionaires, and as trivial as people may think ‘kicking a ball around is’, suspending it wilfully because nobody really gives a crap is saying that the groundsmen, kit men, camera operator, editor, medic, security and the rest of their jobs matter less than everyone else’s.

The sum total of football is entertainment I agree, but those 300 people ‘travelling to and from the stadium’ matter no less than the 1000s of people travelling to marketing firms and the like, so once they are allowed back to work, so should the cameraman. I’m not suggesting they are essential like docs and nurses, but once the lockdown is relaxed and regular folk are back in their offices - then bar the 22, most of the folk in the stadium are also ‘regular people’ who just work in sport and media.
 
Rozay said:
I think that’s fair, but also has a lot to do with how people view sports. It shows in every situation, including this one, that the general public view footballers as a bunch of lucky millionaires who don’t deserve their money and should pretty much shut up at a time like this as nobody cares what they think. In reality, football or ‘sport’ isn’t as ‘unnecessary’ as people make out. It may not be as necessary as hospitals and supermarkets, but it is no less necessary than most other jobs. The 300 people you speak of are not all millionaires, and as trivial as people may think ‘kicking a ball around is’, suspending it wilfully because nobody really gives a crap is saying that the groundsmen, kit men, camera operator, editor, medic, security and the rest of their jobs matter less than everyone else’s.

The sum total of football is entertainment I agree, but those 300 people ‘travelling to and from the stadium’ matter no less than the 1000s of people travelling to marketing firms and the like, so once they are allowed back to work, so should the cameraman. I’m not suggesting they are essential like docs and nurses, but once the lockdown is relaxed and regular folk are back in their offices - then bar the 22, most of the folk in the stadium are also ‘regular people’ who just work in sport and media.
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It is the potential for mass infection that is of course the biggest concern but sport isn't like ever other job even if it is for some people who work there but like other far more essential industries e.g. restaurants that are also much bigger employers but will also have to stay closed longer than others. The real issue is that the UK isn't in control of infections so talking of relaxing already far too lax restrictions is very premature.
 
Wibble said:
It is the potential for mass infection that is of course the biggest concern but sport isn't like ever other job even if it is for some people who work there but like other far more essential industries e.g. restaurants that are also much bigger employers but will also have to stay closed longer than others. The real issue is that the UK isn't in control of infections so talking of relaxing already far too lax restrictions is very premature.
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Fair point again. It is worth noting again that the proposal is for footy to return in about 6 weeks though, so situation likely to have improved much more by then. Then there’s also the point that we will inevitably come back to that we cannot stay locked up forever. I doubt we will be at the point where Corona is a thing of the past when the next ball is kicked. Whatever happens, football, and many other non-essential industry will return with some elements of risk attached. The alternative to that is far worse, which is the world having nothing left to go back outside to. Even if the date isn’t June, I think football will return before it’s eradicated, and I think the step of playing without fans isn’t a small thing that implies nobody in football cares. It’s a massive step, and not the only step either.

The only other alternative is closing it all down for a year, 18 months until everyone is vaccinated. But if that’s the case, it should apply to my job in marketing, yours in HR, schools and just about everything else you don’t literally need to live then, otherwise it is just more targeting of footballers to me. Half of the football conversation since this all began has been about optics anyway, as much as safety. That’s what people care about - again feeding into the overall attitude towards footballers. The country will only see it fair to let them out to resume ‘earning their millions’ once every other person in the land is fully reintegrated because ‘feck them, they are rich‘.

I think footballers should be allowed to play at the same time a guy who works in HR somewhere is allowed back in his office. Neither are essential to life. You can say that a HR guy isn’t body to body, but conversely, his or her company will not be taking the level of precaution football is proposing to resume with either.
 
Rozay said:
Fair point again. It is worth noting again that the proposal is for footy to return in about 6 weeks though, so situation likely to have improved much more by then. Then there’s also the point that we will inevitably come back to that we cannot stay locked up forever. I doubt we will be at the point where Corona is a thing of the past when the next ball is kicked. Whatever happens, football, and many other non-essential industry will return with some elements of risk attached. The alternative to that is far worse, which is the world having nothing left to go back outside to. Even if the date isn’t June, I think football will return before it’s eradicated, and I think the step of playing without fans isn’t a small thing that implies nobody in football cares. It’s a massive step, and not the only step either.

The only other alternative is closing it all down for a year, 18 months until everyone is vaccinated. But if that’s the case, it should apply to my job in marketing, yours in HR, schools and just about everything else you don’t literally need to live then, otherwise it is just more targeting of footballers to me. Half of the football conversation since this all began has been about optics anyway, as much as safety. That’s what people care about - again feeding into the overall attitude towards footballers. The country will only see it fair to let them out to resume ‘earning their millions’ once every other person in the land is fully reintegrated because ‘feck them, they are rich‘.

I think footballers should be allowed to play at the same time a guy who works in HR somewhere is allowed back in his office. Neither are essential to life. You can say that a HR guy isn’t body to body, but conversely, his or her company will not be taking the level of precaution football is proposing to resume with either.
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It won't be an easy way back for Europe. I strongly suspect that the lock-downs will be mainly relaxed ahead of the medical advice. Glad I live in Sydney now TBH. Despite us having it well under control I've been told that I'll be working from home for months which has reduced my stress (not that I had special reason to stress other than being in my mid-50's).
 
I commend Frank Lampard for saying, "it would not sit well with him if Premier League players and staff receive Covid-19 tests while frontline health workers cannot access them."

Sure, football has to resume, like most other businesses, but not in the premise of frequent mass testing footballers and support-staff when frontline workers and symptomatic general people do not have easy access to those tests yet.

When there is such shortage of testing kits globally, how can anyone justify the Premier League's attitude - 'we will buy our own tests, we should be allowed to resume our entertainment business'?
 
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Rozay said:
I thought my question was rhetorical, on the basis that everyone should agree that we shouldn’t just lock our doors for a year unless we sell food. Society will resume, with precaution, and steps taken to mitigate risk.

People will go back to work. In fact, many people in this country never stopped going to work, and I doubt they are considered acceptable to ‘die unnecessarily’. This is just the newest risk that will need to be managed at a stadium, and having 300 people in a stadium instead of 75,000 is quite a drastic risk-reducing step to me.
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By that rationale pubs and clubs can be open as well. All they need is bouncer with rapid test at the door.
 
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/footbal...n-may-seem-unpalatable-survival-game-depends/

Football's return may seem unpalatable but the survival of the game depends on it
Sam Wallace
Chief Football Writer

Football is facing a crisis so severe that no-one can say for certain what will survive and what will not. The 20 clubs that dialled in for the Premier League shareholders’ conference call on Friday might be considered the strongest specimens in this particular struggle for life but even some of them will harbour doubts about their future.

They have to get the games back on again - at the very least they have to try to give hope to the broadcasters who pay the bill for the whole show. It can be unedifying, as the world grapples with the era of the coronavirus, that football seems to be shouldering its way to the front of the queue but what then will be the alternative?

That scenario is plain. Football faces collapsing under a £1.137 billion deficit in the Premier League alone – contractual debt unpaid in wages and transfer fees, renegotiated broadcast contracts, the draining of market confidence that eventually leads to a curdling of the whole system. It is not simply about paying the vast salaries of the Premier League stars, although those contracts are about as easy to unpick as a nuclear submarine.

It is about the £140 million of solidarity money that flows down annually through the Football League system, the next payment already advanced. It is the tax yield estimated at £3.3 billion for the 2016-2017 season alone. The grassroots football supported by leagues and the Football Association, itself facing unprecedented losses of up to £300 million. The canker will spread from the top and once it has taken grip who knows what can be saved?

What was remarkable about Friday’s Premier League meeting, from the view of some attending, was the readiness of some clubs to abandon the season without first attempting to save it. These are the clubs that fear relegation more than anything, and whose anxieties threaten the league that finances the rest of the game.

This group of around six clubs cannot impose their will through voting where a quorum of 14 is needed to carry a motion. Instead those who do not want to see 2019-2020 played can sabotage by other means – amplifying fears, generating resistance among players and staff and encouraging the kind of doubt that makes everything feel impossible. To put it simply, it would be hard to complete 2019-2020 with all 20 clubs on board. It could be impossible with rebels in the group.

Those resisting the attempt to play games are currently marching under the flag of competitive integrity. They say that playing the remaining rounds of games at neutral grounds is out of the question. To which the answer is that the notion is certainly far from ideal. But when placed in the context of global economic depression, the collapse of the most lucrative broadcast contracts in the history of English football and potentially seismic knock-on effects, they are quibbling over the best way to attach a hosepipe while the building burns.

We will all have to adjust to a new normal over the coming months. If neutral grounds for the remaining league fixtures offends you then wait until you see what eating out might entail once restaurants re-open, or having to test one’s self before boarding public transport. The same problems will exist next season but first the clubs have to survive long enough to play next season. It may yet not be possible to finish 2019-2020 but there has to be a unified attempt to do so to give football’s chief wealth creator a chance for life.

The call-it-off brigade says it is all about money. They are right. Unfortunately football cannot recalibrate itself mid-global pandemic as a game in which the stars travel to games on the tram in return for a modest wage, and all the Woodbines they can smoke. Those £9.2 billion of broadcast contracts have been budgeted for to the last cent. In fact, for decades football has been run by those who scheme, borrow and live on the edge of their means. The great clubs of the 1950s and the 1960s and the 1970s would have struggled to continue operating with no crowds through the turnstiles for a year. All that is different now is the scale of the deficit.

What constitutes a safe time to play football? Waiting for a vaccine, as the epidemiologist Professor Mark Woolhouse told the New Scientist last month, is “not a strategy, it’s a hope”. Should we hold off until the death toll reaches zero before the game resumes, regardless of whether that target comes before or after Phil Foden’s 35th birthday? The hygiene and testing protocols for training grounds are so strict that the greatest danger to players will come from infection at home. Of course, once the games begin then there will be more variables.

Modern football can be tough to love. This is not an easy sell to the public but there is so much at stake which is why, as the weeks roll on and the stadiums remain closed, football has an obligation to try to save itself within the boundaries of what government considers appropriate. Few industries have the resources to protect their own employees as football does. What else can it do but try?

The alternative is, most likely, for the game to die waiting. If there is no attempt to complete the current season then the clubs can expect the broadcasters to renegotiate the remaining two years on the current rights cycle. They will do so knowing that the clubs are desperate, starved of revenue and for the first time since the explosion in the values of rights, the power will be entirely on the other side of the table. Already in France the broadcaster Canal Plus has withheld its last two payments to the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) at the cost of €253 million.

The French season is over and the LFP is reduced to asking its government for a loan to survive. There is a way to complete the English league season, safeguard contracts and keep the money that is the lifeblood of the game flowing. However unpalatable it may feel in the midst of a crisis it is the least worst option.
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Rozay said:
We’ve had 300 people in every supermarket even during the worst of this pandemic.
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Oh, come on, you're talking about an entirely different situation altogether.

Shopping for essentials is one thing, playing a game of football merely to provide entertainment for the public is another. The two are not remotely comparable in terms of necessity.

Rozay said:
Should everyone just stay at home for a year unless they sell food?
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Yes, we should only leave our homes if absolutely necessary.
 
TheLord said:
I commend Frank Lampard for saying, "it would not sit well with him if Premier League players and staff receive Covid-19 tests while frontline health workers cannot access them."

Sure, football has to resume, like most other businesses, but not in the premise of frequent mass testing footballers and support-staff when frontline workers and symptomatic general people do not have easy access to those tests yet.

When there is such shortage of testing kits globally, how can anyone justify the Premier League's attitude - 'we will buy our own tests, we should be allowed to resume our entertainment business'?
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If I were a manager / coach / officionales of any stripe -right now more than any other time in my professional lifetime - I would be focusing my whole being on making the right public statement noises. Talk is cheaper than that Derby player was after his contact got cancelled for drunk driving his team mates into a wall. At the end of the day, Frankie will get in line and do what he is told.
 
The Telegraph article is correct, people seem to want football to take some sort of moral approach and just switch everything off, take a massive financial hit, expose themselves to legal claims from all over the place, and then return to entertain us in September without missing a beat, whilst having to factor in missing out on all their gate receipts for the entire upcoming season.

It's not going to happen, and people need to start hoping they can this back on somehow, which can likely be done with only minor risk involved, it'll be peoples opinion that will stop it if we're not careful.
 
Rozay is arguing this well. But it only has me revisiting what's the point as so called entertainment in cramming 1/4 of a season into 4 weeks in empty neutral grounds when everyone knows Liverpool have won it anyway?

It seems unclear what next season will comprise atm too. So what are the rest actually playing for?

If they want to do something, they'd be better off deciding the football issues however they like, and starting next season early with a smaller schedule and one Cup competition, space for Europe if that happens. Pre planning around the possibility of another outbreak.

But obviously there's more money involved than sense.

For example, are you going to be playing home and away at these neutral grounds next season?

None of it is any good I suppose, maybe why they want to drive through what they can pretend is a resumption of being back like nothing has stopped the gravy train.
 
fck said:
Well this deadly virus will be around for years. So what is your solution? No football for three years and see you in 2024?
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Well what is your solution ?
Get people killed and as many as possible just to play football?
 
Appalling, self-serving shite from Wallace in The Telegraph today. Football may well get used to this new-found ambivalence it’s experiencing within society right now. The modern game is grotesque and absolutely impossible to relate to from a working-class perspective. If the powers-that-be think the hundreds of thousands around the country who are now unemployed give two fecks about football and the money problems within, they are in for a rude awakening. Many are already admitting that they don’t miss football (or sport in general) as much as they thought they would.

Society will prioritise things that are essential in times such as these, and funding the most vacuous, self-aggrandising, insular industry in the country is far, far, far down that list of priorities right now.
 
Premier League clubs are facing a player revolt over the plan to restart the season with a number of foreign stars approaching their governments and agents for advice on whether it will be safe for them to return to action on June 12.
 
There is a major rift emerging between the top 14 Premier League clubs and those in the bottom six, with concerns that the relegation strugglers will try to block the completion of the season and plunge the league into financial disaster.
 
Buchan said:
Appalling, self-serving shite from Wallace in The Telegraph today. Football may well get used to this new-found ambivalence it’s experiencing within society right now. The modern game is grotesque and absolutely impossible to relate to from a working-class perspective. If the powers-that-be think the hundreds of thousands around the country who are now unemployed give two fecks about football and the money problems within, they are in for a rude awakening. Many are already admitting that they don’t miss football (or sport in general) as much as they thought they would.

Society will prioritise things that are essential in times such as these, and funding the most vacuous, self-aggrandising, insular industry in the country is far, far, far down that list of priorities right now.
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Well I'm missing sport, and want as much of what was there before to still be there afterwards.

Loads of people are likely about to be asked to return to their daily jobs within the next 3-4 weeks, they will be asked as this is needed to save the companies they work for from going bust, and also their jobs, this will not come without risk, but good planning will hopefully mitigate most of it, I just don't see why football, golf, rugby, horse racing, etc, shouldn't be looking to do the same.
 
Fox_Chrys said:
The problem I have is this.

Most people are either still working, or are furloughed with reduced pay.

Players are been protected but also still getting full pay. Which doesn't sit right with me, even though its in their contracts.
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Let's be honest here: players are untouchable. When Tevez went golfing to Argentina for 5 months City could only punish him by taking away 2-week wages and that's it. They have zero responsibility, they're overpaid, on long term contracts, nobody can fire them but if they dont like their manager he's gone few days later. When there's increase in TV money it ends up in players' pocket and the only thing you read on forums or Twitter is grown-ups idolizing these man-childs. Footballers are good when they play football but clubs should be given more power. Looking at Aguero, the guy moved to UK for work in 2011 and he still can't hardly say more than three sentences in english. A guy like him would be playing football for 1/100 he earns right now!
 
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Blackwidow said:
Ikea Cologne this afternoon...



There were kilometres of cars on the way to IKEA Dortmund.

If there just would run some actual football in TV...
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Honestly these people are caricatures. I definitely wouldn't want to make decisions based on what these creatures want and need in their life. 6 weeks without buying things they don't need and this is what happens after that.
 
Buchan said:
Appalling, self-serving shite from Wallace in The Telegraph today. Football may well get used to this new-found ambivalence it’s experiencing within society right now. The modern game is grotesque and absolutely impossible to relate to from a working-class perspective. If the powers-that-be think the hundreds of thousands around the country who are now unemployed give two fecks about football and the money problems within, they are in for a rude awakening. Many are already admitting that they don’t miss football (or sport in general) as much as they thought they would.

Society will prioritise things that are essential in times such as these, and funding the most vacuous, self-aggrandising, insular industry in the country is far, far, far down that list of priorities right now.
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I agree and maybe the time has come for football to be re-dimensioned after all this.
 
christinaa said:
Premier League clubs are facing a player revolt over the plan to restart the season with a number of foreign stars approaching their governments and agents for advice on whether it will be safe for them to return to action on June 12.
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But it wouldn't be up them, they are contracted to play, so if it is deemed safe to do so by the league then they play, l don't see how it is different from the government saying certain businesses can open from a certain date, if you work for one of those businesses then unless you have a medical reason not to, you go back, or be risk been sacked.
 
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Megadrive Man said:
They will be tested and safer than people that work in B&Q and many other non essential industries.

Social distancing and other measures will be put in to place.

if all 300 people are happy to work then what's the problem?
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By what logic would a professional footballer deserve testing ahead of the thousands of NHS workers who are at risk daily?
 
Megadrive Man said:
The relaxation of the lockdown is going to start on Thursday.

Idiots will always be idiots, but why pander to them?

If they make behind closed doors matches free to air, it would actually encourage people to stay in?
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Nope. And even if it does, for how long? Netflix and other watch on demand streaming services beat sports live streaming anyday when it comes into keeping people inside the house. Larger number of audiences, cheaper, more interesting for average people.

I think at this point the Premier League should try to set an example. It has enough financial strength to cope with it. We are not talking about a small branch of BurgerKing. It should not be about "since people are stupid, lets join them". The footbalers, the club owners and the FA boards arent eating canned foods to sustain themselves during pandemic. They wont be eating canned foods even if They keep paying the staffs without the TV money coming in.

But of course there is always an agenda to support the economy, the world revolves around money. It just makes me a bit itchy since They always go on and on abour fair play, tribute to disaster x, tribute to y and his families, We will never forget, etc. But when They actually have the chance to prevent another disaster They don't.
 
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Let's be honest this season's integrity has well and truly gone. It will be like having 9 pre season friendly matches if they do force this through. This begs the question why bother when you can look at other non playing ways to finish the season? People keep going on about testing but they don't seem to realise the same people would have to be tested every single game and maybe in training. There's no antibody test in circulation that can give you quick results and/or is deemed reliable enough, and science doesn't fully understand if having it once makes a difference or not. That's a whole lot of speculative testing when we still have people who are unwell struggling to get access.
 
Needham said:
If I were a manager / coach / officionales of any stripe -right now more than any other time in my professional lifetime - I would be focusing my whole being on making the right public statement noises. Talk is cheaper than that Derby player was after his contact got cancelled for drunk driving his team mates into a wall. At the end of the day, Frankie will get in line and do what he is told.
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The Derby player that was sacked wasn’t driving , the player that was driving still plays for Derby.
 
Not sure whether this has been mentioned before, but why don’t they just start the 2020/2021 season with teams starting with their current point total?

This would gives teams recognition for their current seasons efforts, at least partially! Got to feel sorry for teams that are looking for promotion to the premier league only to have that voided.
 
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