This is hardly rocket science anymore!
Ok, none of us are scientists or senior medics but it seems impossible that the present season – despite the Premier League’s desperation – can be finished.
It will be another three weeks at least (May 7) before any easing in the lockdown can be considered and that certainly won’t include an agreement to allow major gatherings.
So even should behind closed doors matches be considered a possibilit,y we have the problems mentioned firstly by David Moyes and Kevin De Bruyne yesterday who both nailed it for me purely from a football point of view.
After such a long lay off players will need around a month minimum to get fit and full contact training – as in the Bundesliga – is unlikely to be allowed.
Assuming we can overcome those difficulties, playing nine matches within say a month could see injuries piling up which the Man City man said could cause chaos to next season.
We then have to assume that the players involved are not carrying symptoms before they get into a game along with the TV crews.
We understand the determination to get things underway if possible but the window for such a situation gets narrower and narrower at a time when the clubs need certainty more than anything else in order to put budgeting issues in place as far as they can.
Football is no special case and if the Government decide to allow it, why not cricket, golf, horse racing or any other sport.
Let’s get real – surely this can’t happen!
The Premier League bosses claim the integrity of the league has to be maintained but the number of games in the time required and the threat of injuries involved frankly doesn’t allow such a worthy aim – it would be a totally unnatural end to the season and fail to achieve that objective anyway
It’s surely time to call this to a close and accept the inevitable
When Money is such a Driving Force against such blindingly obvious common-sense, normal people like us cannot understand or comprehend how organisations can arrive at such decisions.
This has been my view, early doors during this pandemic because I couldn’t logically see this season being concluded.
Footballers, as we ALL recognise these days, are ATHLETES, they are NOT machines that you can put into action at a moments notice no matter how much hours of gym work they have been doing since football was stopped. FIT and MATCH FIT are two Very different things and to subject these athletes to football at a moments notice is Ludacris. Not to mention that they have worries and concerns like the rest of us.
Football smashed out behind closed doors one game after the other is madness and totally meaningless and it would have Zero legitimacy to ALL supporters and lovers of the game of football.
Injury’s to players would be inevitable and costly without a proper pre-season or month-long training camp before competitive games.
With this nonsense planned……….. The powers that be would be effectively attempting to F*** up two seasons instead of trying to return to normality for next season (later this year hopefully).
All this rumour and speculation can only mean one thing……… The powers that be who are responsible for the direction that we will be heading in are not on the same planet as the rest of us and probably don’t even realise what has been going on around the world during this Global Pandemic.
Integrity of the league ? Really ?there is no integrity if you play behind closed doors or at neutral venues. Sorry sounds a bit weak to me. Absolutely over. Do they actually see the news ?
Is there merit in ending the current season now, promoting those clubs in the automatic promotion places in the premiership and EFL without relegating any clubs, (possibly) starting next season early with an adjusted number of fixtures (42 in the premiership) and having a promotion and relegation arrangement that returned each division to its current number at the end of the season?
Moyes and De Bruyne, only time you’ll see those two in the same sentence.