Football and the Coronavirus

Soldato
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Good for Spurs and probably the correct decision but a dangerous precedent has now been set and no club will be accepting offers to get their players tested from now on. Give it a few weeks and the Premier League will be suspended again unless both domestic cup competitions are cancelled or the powers that be make testing compulsory before matches.
doesn't that mean that teams will be more likely to be tested otherwise they're out? I don't follow how that's a dangerous precedent?
 
Soldato
Joined
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pantyhose factory
this seasons league cup and FA cup winners will end up being non premier league teams if those comps carry on with no stipulation on testing. Can see it going like this

  • EFL team draws prem team in next round
  • Prem team says here's x grand get your entire team tested
  • EFL team says no thanks
  • Prem team says fine we aren't playing
  • EFL team gets bye to next round
Prem teams will not want to miss prem matches or risk the possibility of fielding weaker teams for prem matches due to players having to self isolate due to EFL teams not wanting testing. Fiscally EPL is worth more to them than the FA or League cups.
 
Soldato
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Lorville - Hurston
Good for Spurs and probably the correct decision but a dangerous precedent has now been set and no club will be accepting offers to get their players tested from now on. Give it a few weeks and the Premier League will be suspended again unless both domestic cup competitions are cancelled or the powers that be make testing compulsory before matches.
Daily cases are 7k now. thats massive, in a weeks time that will be double , That is very very scary and if it reaches higher numbers, the league will be posponed, mark my words.
 
Soldato
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Northumberland
The National League might be mothballed this season.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/54281233

Huge shame if true, as a number of clubs will likely fold before any football can restart. The whole idea of trying to get fans back to the elite level, whilst ignoring the calls of the clubs at this level, is ridiculous IMO. For example, my local club could have 90-95% of last season's attendance whilst respecting distancing rules. And I suspect it would be the same for the vast majority of the national leagues.

I think any clubs deciding they won't test their staff/players should be forced to lose the game. Ridiculous thinking.
 
Man of Honour
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Surprised more hasn't been made of this nonsense where Spurs get a bye to the next round because the opposition have Covid. Surely the normal rules about being able to fulfil a fixture need relaxing otherwise you aren't encouraging the right behaviours, lower league teams will be scared stiff of having tests done in case it knocks them out of the cup and puts their whole livelihood at risk.
 
Soldato
Joined
9 Mar 2012
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18,630
Surprised more hasn't been made of this nonsense where Spurs get a bye to the next round because the opposition have Covid. Surely the normal rules about being able to fulfil a fixture need relaxing otherwise you aren't encouraging the right behaviours, lower league teams will be scared stiff of having tests done in case it knocks them out of the cup and puts their whole livelihood at risk.

They agreed to it before hand so i dont see the issue.
 
Soldato
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Lorville - Hurston
I just dont see football continuing, it will be posponed. probably around End of October/Early Nov when the numbers skyrocket all over the globe again.

Footy will then resume around end of jan/feb.

I also dont see the olympics being done next year either. That will be binned also. This WONT be the last wave... We are going to keep having waves of this
 
Caporegime
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Boston, Lincolnshire
Surprised more hasn't been made of this nonsense where Spurs get a bye to the next round because the opposition have Covid. Surely the normal rules about being able to fulfil a fixture need relaxing otherwise you aren't encouraging the right behaviours, lower league teams will be scared stiff of having tests done in case it knocks them out of the cup and puts their whole livelihood at risk.

If anything it is a negative for Spurs. Playing minnows is great for them due to a lack of pre-season.
 
Don
Joined
9 Jun 2004
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46,306
10 positive tests amongst PL staff and players, including the 3 from West Ham, highest number they've had so far.
That's still not too bad to be fair. Iirc when the Bundesliga first returned to finish last season they had more than that - the PL's testing when it returned was surprisingly low in comparison. I think it's to be expected that we'll see higher numbers now than the end of last season too. Back then everybody was under lockdown and following the rules and regs much more than they probably are now. I know at Liverpool the club was making sure all groceries etc were being delivered to players so that they could stay home as much as humanly possible but long term you can't lock players (and their families) in their homes for months on end. Players are going to pick the virus up but hopefully regular testing will pick cases up quickly so there's not a mass outbreak at any one club.
 
Don
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9 Jun 2004
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The PL and EFL have agreed a deal regarding covid testing for League Cup and FA Cup games. Tests will now be compulsory for any EFL side that draws a PL side and the cost of testing will be covered by the PL.

The PL have reportedly also agreed to determine the outcome of the season by PPG in the event the season is cut short however as yet they've not agreed on a minimum number of games that would need to be played for this to happen.
 
Caporegime
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Welling, London
The PL and EFL have agreed a deal regarding covid testing for League Cup and FA Cup games. Tests will now be compulsory for any EFL side that draws a PL side and the cost of testing will be covered by the PL.

The PL have reportedly also agreed to determine the outcome of the season by PPG in the event the season is cut short however as yet they've not agreed on a minimum number of games that would need to be played for this to happen.
I really hope it doesn’t come to that. PPG is such a crap system, it doesn’t take into account the difficultly of the fixture list played d the difficulty of the fixtures remaining. It’s just totally flawed.
 
Don
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9 Jun 2004
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I really hope it doesn’t come to that. PPG is such a crap system, it doesn’t take into account the difficultly of the fixture list played d the difficulty of the fixtures remaining. It’s just totally flawed.
I think this debate has been done to death rob. As I said many times during lockdown, there's no perfect answer. All you can do is find the fairest way possible and you'd hope that with 75% of the season completed things would be fairly even. Whichever method you use somebody will benefit and somebody will be penalised.

I don't think we're going to see the season cut short anyway, the League is just getting its ducks in order just in case so we don't have the situation like last season with everybody putting forward their own agenda.
 
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