I agree with a lot of what you say here, if getting the football back up and running doesn't take resources away from fighting covid then that's fine, as long as the risks are minimised for everyone involved then great, have at it.
The issue I have with it, and this is where the reality is different to your restaurant and pub analogy, is that football isn't back for all. It's back for a couple of the leagues in this country and not others. To go back to your analogy its like saying that your local can't open as it's not a big enough business but the Wetherspoons can as they have more customers and donate directly to the government.
Football clubs are businesses but they're also part of various competitions unlike pubs and restaurants. To resume playing using different rules in a league competition part way through is a joke, it makes a mockery of the phrase 'integrity of the league', it's just plain stupid.
If the rules are changed part way through a knockout cup competition it's different as each round can be seen as a seperate competition, so if cup games are played at neutral venues for one round then that's fine, as long as each team in each round plays the game in equal circumstances then that's fair. This doesn't work for leagues though. To carry on a league competition with different rules than it started with makes literally no sense, it's no longer the same competition.
They should have just given the scousers the trophy that the league has been working towards gifting them all season, take their photos to market it abroad and then come up with some kind of separate local competions for teams that felt willing and able to compete in. These could have been televised as one off competitions and the money shared out equally between the various teams, this would have helped out so many teams across all the country in all leagues and would have had an arguably bigger draw on TV than watching a stale kick about between two mid table teams with unfit and unmotivated players.
Use whatever system they fancy to work out final league placings, PPG or whatever and take that as the final league placings for relegation, promotion and European placings and call off this ridiculous abortion of a season. Its not ideal but it's probably the fairest way of doing things, teams are going to get relegated because their games aren't played in the same manner their opponents games are which is ridiculous.
This may at least give us a chance of getting next season started in some kind of organised fashion, possibly using rules that incorporate some kind of provision for this happening again if there's a second wave of illnesses.
