Coronavirus in football

If a two week break got the numbers down for all teams it would be worth while.

But the big risk is that you're wasting time for a lot of teams who have no reason not to play. And then really have to pack the schedule to fit the missing games in.

International games need to be binned where possible. All friendlies and that nations cup as minimum.
 
Mickeza said:
Cases in the community are at a record high. Football doesn’t exist in another land - that clearly has an impact on the number of cases within football. I’d imagine the thinking is if there is a lockdown then a 2 week break to coincide with that and the inevitable lowering of cases means football can then restart when cases in general are much lower.
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Would make more sense for sure, but 2 weeks? Has 2 weeks anywhere been proven to drastically reduce covid cases in the community :confused:
 
That 2-week break won't solve anything. Rather try to continue and play as many games as possible.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Would make more sense for sure, but 2 weeks? Has 2 weeks anywhere been proven to drastically reduce covid cases in the community :confused:
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All about how they time it. They’re probably thinking 2 week break 10 days after the inevitable Tier 7 that’s coming. It may not be needed though - I’m guessing this is all just a contingency at this point. The other solution is they go into actual bubbles NBA/cricket style for the next 4 weeks.
 
Mickeza said:
All about how they time it. They’re probably thinking 2 week break 10 days after the inevitable Tier 7 that’s coming. It may not be needed though - I’m guessing this is all just a contingency at this point. The other solution is they go into actual bubbles NBA/cricket style for the next 4 weeks.
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I’m sceptical, I think a break will end up with a scrapped season as the threshold of acceptable cases would be set so incredibly low.
 
Catt said:
Would it help to bin the FA cup?
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Wasn’t one of the potential solutions from last season to bin one of the domestic cups in England anyway? I feel like I read that somewhere. It should have been done anyway, just by nature of how grueling this more condensed season is.

If they’re finding themselves scrapped for time in the English season, then one or both of the domestic cups should be called off.

International friendlies/qualifiers should be halted for now as well.
 
The testing is clearly working so just keep it going, and make the teams with the worst outbreaks play with limited subs if necessary, it might focus the mind for some clubs to keep their 'bubbles' that bit tighter in future.

If they stop it with the numbers they have now, they'll be little jusification for them bringing it back until the Spring.
 
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I'd agree with a break provided the government agrees to tier 4 the whole country from say, Monday January 4th. Southampton play Liverpool on that day, but there's no reason they can't move the game to the late slot on Sunday instead and begin the break until maybe January 16/17.

There won't be much need to postpone any fixtures bar a handful and it would be a case of postponing mainly FA Cup fixtures and the League Cup Semis Finals.

It just makes the most sense to me, to do it now (well, after the next round of fixtures) instead of inevitably scrambling later in the season when there are European fixtures to contend with as well.

Cup games are generally easier to figure out IMO and teams would probably be more flexible with just fecking them off entirely if there was no room. I just see too much of a headache eventually if something isn't done quickly and at the right moment. Too many outbreaks in clubs will eventually lead to fixtures that can't be rescheduled and forfeits will probably end up being used as a last resort.

Farce of a season and it's going to get worse.
 
If they have a 2-week break to "cut off" cases they`d need every player, club member and other officials in a hard isolation for the whole time to make that work and then return with 100% bubble, otherwise that 2 weeks break would have no impact whatsoever. Given that athletes are generally a bid thick and the industry itself is heavely connected and its infrastructure has multiple contacts (see hotels, bus drivers, airports etc.) I don`t think it`ll work. So if they declare a 2 week break with the hope that there`ll be close to none cases in two weeks the whole break will probably end up being +2 months. Which obviously would not work with summer schedule whatsoever. So they probably (from a functionality perspective) should just roll on with heavy testing and an huge expected amount of players to miss matches (which will be imbalanced but yeah, what to do).

Football business unsurprisingly is simply just as bad as the rest as the majority of neoliberal work society in adapting to Covid. They easily had the money and the infrastructure to prevent the situation now, especially as everyone saw it coming with cases rising across the country. But conservative mindset of not changing ones traditional habits, putting "work" above everything else and not taking things serious has led to this mess. I`m sure that despite all their PR on how serious their "concepts" are you have a lot of people in the industry ignoring cautions because they`re to stubborn to change their habbits.
 
TMDaines said:
I said this in the FPL thread, but if this is your threshold for needing a circuit breaker then you will need several of them before the end of the season. Why would you make a load of teams sit out for two weeks just because a few sides have a number of cases? You just need to postpone the fixtures of those sides and allow others to get on with it. You can even rearrange some fixtures to minimise the number of sides sitting out because their opponents cannot field a team.
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Yup, and this was what Ole was getting at in his press conference when they spoke about a two week break. He wasn’t impressed at all. Why does every club have to suffer with a huge fixture backlog because less than a handful of clubs have failed to keep themselves properly bubbled?.
It’s not really acceptable to be popping up with half of your staff infected. As @Kasper mentioned, this is a failure on footballs part and a two week break will do feck all. I get the feeling this two week break is just some way of them making it look like they’re doing something.
 
 
Any news on the Chelsea - City game and our league cup game? City said they would test everyone yesterday, what has the outcome been?
 
Samid said:
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Makes sense. Just carry on and teams with outbreaks get games postponed till they're sure that teams bubble is secure.

Might see kids get games if no other options to field teams.
 
I think they should keep it going. Allardyce only wants it stopped so he can try and get West Brom sorted out because they're crap.
 
I find it extremely fecking suspicious that City aren't more or less getting instant test results. Testing Sunday morning and getting their results Monday morning, testing Tuesday after getting a match called off and over 24 hours laters there's no news on the result ?

There's no fecking way they are that useless.
 
UncleBob said:
I find it extremely fecking suspicious that City aren't more or less getting instant test results. Testing Sunday morning and getting their results Monday morning, testing Tuesday after getting a match called off and over 24 hours laters there's no news on the result ?

There's no fecking way they are that useless.
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Bearing in mind jose has just said they don't even know if tonight's game is on yet, i wouldn't think there's much expertise going on.
 
UncleBob said:
I find it extremely fecking suspicious that City aren't more or less getting instant test results. Testing Sunday morning and getting their results Monday morning, testing Tuesday after getting a match called off and over 24 hours laters there's no news on the result ?

There's no fecking way they are that useless.
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They probably do know, we just don't know.
 
What the hell would a circuit breaker do? Makes absolutely no sense. Would make sense to wait a couple of months until the vaccine takes hold but then the season would never be finished so that’s impossible.

They should come up with rigid contingency plans for when a club has an outbreak i.e. back-up training facilities for those who have tested negative. Then I personally think just play kids if you’ve got loads of players out with the virus. Just carry on playing.
 


Could end up being a clusterfeck if more games get postponed. Even without the postponements, City would quite likely have had double games in three different PL gameweeks to come.
 
sullydnl said:


Could end up being a clusterfeck if more games get postponed.
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Cup matches being played was a mistake that was flagged from the start. Also feck the Euros. Thats the biggest disgrace in all of this
 
cyberman said:
Cup matches being played was a mistake that was flagged from the start. Also feck the Euros. Thats the biggest disgrace in all of this
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No the biggest joke is the fecking nations league and international friendlies being played
 
I can't understand how games are being cancelled when the rules have been set that 14 players need to be infected. Either follow them or just scrap the season alltogether, don't understand the decisions here.
 
sullydnl said:


Could end up being a clusterfeck if more games get postponed. Even without the postponements, City would quite likely have had double games in three different gameweeks to come.
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UCL teams will have two possible slots in the R016 matchweeks that they don't play in while teams not in Europe (so for eg the prosponed Villa vs Newcastle match) can be squeezed in many places.

It's any UEL team making it all the way where things could really come home to roost.
 
Spurs v Fulham postponed. Covid really is going to feck up this season again. Teams are going to have 3 or 4 games in hand at this rate.
 
I heard we could have an opportunity to play Burnley (our game in hand) if the Man City game gets postponed.
 
Chief123 said:
I heard we could have an opportunity to play Burnley (our game in hand) if the Man City game gets postponed.
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Yep. I can see the league moving games around like this. A bit more foresight and we could have Everton v Spurs moved forward and have City v Fulham moved to that week?
 


No more special treatment for Liverpool.
 
Hodgson, Allardyce.

What if we continue and one of the above dies? Is this a reasonable sacrifice for the public to continue the enjoyment of football?
 
dal said:
Hodgson, Allardyce.

What if we continue and one of the above dies? Is this a reasonable sacrifice for the public to continue the enjoyment of football?
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There are older people working all over the country. If anything these 2 are amongst the most protected.
 
dal said:
Hodgson, Allardyce.

What if we continue and one of the above dies? Is this a reasonable sacrifice for the public to continue the enjoyment of football?
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Depends which one dies.

If it's Hodgson then carry on. I remember his actions post Iceland match.
 
Joke of the system. You either play or you cancel the season. It is not like they didn't new this would happen. And they even had rules in place. Rules that they are now going against.
 
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