Ways To End The Season Fairly

I don’t think there is going to be a win- win situation here, somebody is going to be unhappy no matter what.

I can however see when this is all over people holding big grudges against companies perceived to be putting profit first. I think it would take a brave/stupid person to stand up and moan about the outcome of a football competition when the country is grieving over the loss of 20,000+ People

 

Maybe he should take it up with the coronavirus and get his point across to it that he's been let down.

 

Can anyone honestly say that in the last few days they’ve even given football a second thought?

 

I occasionally wonder how long it will be before the PL voids the season and declares Liverpool de facto champions

 

According to The Athletic, their sources within clubs are now saying come clubs are starting to swing towards voting for the season to be voided. I think the consensus will be to finish the season, or void it. Can’t see there being a ‘halfway-house’ for Liverpool, Leeds etc.

 

I now think that's a more likely outcome. Just imagine if Liverpool win their next two matches behind closed doors and win the league. Do you think fans of that club will all sit at home and just give a little fist pump at their TV screens?

It would entice social gatherings, even if you're playing matches behind closed doors. People will naturally want to share the experience of watching the games together. You cannot stop that if people on mass gather to celebrate.

When the government's message is to stay in doors, they cannot possibly play games behind closed doors as this stage of the season leads to promotion's and Championships. Fans involved with clubs going for these things always want to be together, so this would be like dangling a piece of raw meat in front of a hungry lion.

Playing any form of sport would be off message. Anything that entices people gatherings you just cannot do right now. People seem to be obeying the rules finally and the last thing you want is to restart the Premier League when the pandemic is peaking which entices people out of their homes.

For me the closed stadium solution should not even be considered. Smaller clubs will not get the match-day revenue for fans yet will still have to pay for emergency services. There is bound to be people milling around outside, so policing would be needed around stadiums. You have to either play the season out in packed stadiums or void the entire thing.

If we're talking about July or August, then it becomes too messy to finish this season then start a new one. The knock-on effect to this will be for several seasons. Even though Gary Neville thinks you can play 9 games in 9 days in a festival of football, in reality that will not happen. You need 6 weeks minimum to complete this season. Probably longer if you are including FA Cup and European ties.

Players have now rested for a long time. If we get to July, as looking likely, the will need a full pre-season before they get going again as that would have meant having 4 months off.

It's clear Covid-19 is not going away anytime soon. It was more hope than anything really to expect this to go away quickly. Scrap this season and have a slight delay to next season. Maybe start it in September.

 

For me...that doesn't make too much sense. They can start selling season tickets whenever they like. They don't need this season to be voided in order to do that.

So to cancel the season for that reason alone doesn't really add up. But with all non league voiding their games and now the EFL are making noises about that, there seems to be a growing tend....one that started at root level and moving up, for once.

For financial reasons it would be a disaster to void the season, unless a deal can be struck with the TV companies. For Watford's relegation concerns it would be wonderful, but what impact would the loss of revenue cause us? Probably less than a relegation I suppose, so I'd say bring it on.

 

Clubs are businesses, cashflow is king, and the best way to get cashflow back to normal, considering there will be no football in April or May, is to start next season on time

 

Have just read an article that means some clubs (us being one with Adidas) may have issues with sponsors and manufacturers as well to deal with - as terms of those deals apparently have the number of games the manufacturer or sponsor can expect the kit to be played in. And if the season is extended, then the kit deals need to be extended as well which has a knock on effect for any subsequent deals for next season. I’m sure it could be worked out but again, it’s an example of another hurdle to jump over and contract to be re-written.

I always felt that once the curve of this thing started to rise that football, and this season in particular, would just become irrelevant to most - seems people are coming round to that. All these supposed timelines to get back under way again are fine - but I don’t see any of them being realistic given the nature of what we are being told to expect over the next weeks and months. Football authorities have been burying their head in the sand a bit and I don’t see how they can keep meeting every few weeks and continually pushing a new provisional start date back. At some point they will need to be realistic and make the decision.

 

I don’t understand the notion of disrupting next season in order to finish this one.

Would clubs really want to sacrifice an entire season of revenue and sky money just to finish this one off?

Football has faded into insignificance for the first time and the only morally right thing to do is void it and we’ll start over in September.

 

They will be happy to disrupt next season in order to finish this one if they get 2 years of revenue and no claims from sponsors or tv companies. They’d play 3 games a week if required to achieve that. Sod the players health or in fact anything else.

 

Any chance to put the article in the safe section?

Does it give any suggestion as to what would happen to European spots if the season was voided?

Cheers.

 

More talks next week to come up with a solution.

https://www.efl.com/news/2020/march/efl-statement-coronavirus-update5/

EFL OFFICIAL STATEMENT

The Premier League, EFL and PFA met today and discussed the growing seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It was stressed that the thoughts of all three organisations continue to be with everyone affected by the virus.

The Premier League, EFL and PFA agreed that difficult decisions will have to be taken in order to mitigate the economic impact of the current suspension of professional football in England and agreed to work together to arrive at shared solutions.

The leagues will not recommence until 30 April at the earliest. They will only do so when it is safe and conditions allow.

Further meetings will take place next week with a view to formulating a joint plan to deal with the difficult circumstances facing the leagues, their Clubs, players, staff and fans.

 

Ahh, I only saw it because someone tweeted the whole thing from their account. You can sign up to The Athletic for 90 days for free currently I think though...

If I remember, the suggestion was that the teams that qualified last season would play in Europe.

 

Those teams would feel rightfully aggrieved but they don’t have much of a case to pursue anything I doubt.

Moreover, if the season is voided, any team that feels wronged would have to tread very carefully when airing their issues and taking legal action - in my opinion (and that’s all it is), it would look pretty bad and tasteless to do so in the aftermath of what is happening right now.

If I was any of these clubs (Liverpool, Leeds etc) I wouldn’t even really want to gain anything out of the season. It’s always going to be ‘tainted’ and remembered for other reasons.

Personally think it would be a PR disaster to kick up a fuss. They’d look great in the public eye if they accepted the season being voided and said they understand in the circumstances.

 

as of tomorrow it will be 1000 deaths per day....are some ppl still dripping on about football league...?

 

Average deaths per day in the UK was already normally about 1,700.

 

If the PL teams all took the government offer of 80% pay upto £2500 then they would easily have the spare money to pay back the TV companies and scrap this season.

 

You have to scrap all European completions until everything is back to normal.

 

So what you're saying is Covid 19 saves live?

 

1000 a day was aimed at Italy and widely recognised by WHO as being totemic and at which point the growth curve becomes exponential.

UK will soon hit 200 per day, doubling roughly every 4-5 days. It's not about death count but that critical care hospital admissions will completely paralyse the NHS which can barely cope with business as normal - overload it with 10% of population critically ill with corona induced factors and the bodies start stacking up literally. In Whitehall there is a mass-deaths focus group right now - go figure....like I said at start of month, this season and academic year is finished. Aim for a reset in September. On a positive note, it seems Pearson has avoided regulation again...he can add it to his CV, massaging the facts en-route.

 

If this season was void would that mean Bury fc would get reinstated in league 1

 

Yeah and Javi Gracia gets his job back here.

 

He's giving perspective on how many people die in the UK every day before COVID.

 

Italy currently has 86,000 total cases and 9,000 deaths. Do you really believe that in the future 10% of the UK population will be "critically ill" with COVID? 6.5 million people critically ill? Just in the UK.

 

Anyone else notice that the world started falling apart just about the time we beat Liverpool 3-0? See what we started?

 

When the season is binned, that result will be scratched from the records. Our best ever team performance and result never happened.

 

So 9000 deaths in Italy. People would have called you mad if you’d predicated that in mid Feb.

PHE modelling is 60% of population will be exposed. Of that 80% will exhibit symptoms and 20% may require primary or secondary treatment...so that’s 7.8m requiring some form of treatment. 1-3% death rate...why do you think the army is rapidly building field hospitals at Excel and elsewhere.

 

I disagree with those that have said stuff like it's "our best ever team performance" - the truth is that Liverpool just haven't been the same team since the winter break. Before the loss to us they'd lost to Atletico, scraped past Muff 2-1, and lost to Chelsea (albeit it was their reserves in the Cup).

Had we managed to beat them while they were still flying and at the top of their form then it would have been our best performance, but they'd looked tired lately and just didn't really turn up against us. Plus they had

I'd probably even consider our win against Spurs last season as a greater achievement for example, as Spurs were at pretty much full strength in that match and played well. It was an actual contest where we had to be at 100% to nick a win.

 

7.8m requiring “some kind of treatment” according to your model (I haven’t checked your maths but let’s assume you are competent). So 6.5 million “critically ill” would appear to be nonsense scaremongering on your part then.

We really could do without the likes of you scaremongering on the internet. 3% death rate? Do you think that is credible?

 

Err...the Chelsea and Bournemouth games were after they lost to us.

 

You’re kidding right ? Won every league game except one, 20 odd points clear, loads of other ridiculous stats and you claim the fact that they weren’t in good form devalues the win