COVID Watch

[Woody135]

All Scottish football below champion level suspended for 4 weeks.

Sign of things to come?

100% this will happen when/if either liverpool or united have to close their training ground.
They will not be forced to play with 5/6 players missing due to an outbreak guaranteed

 

[LongsightM13]

Fulham have been well and truly stitched up. Not a chance the PL would dare do that if it was Mourinho on the receiving end

 

[Summerbuzz]

Love a bit of City but we're basically perpetuating the impression that despite a nominal lockdown, it's business of usual. Meanwhile hospitals are about to burst, traffic is crazy and the news is all about vaccines success saving the day.

Time to call it a day IMHO.

 

[BobbyBoy]

Looks like you really don’t understand the topic Bobby because, as has been widely discussed on here and elsewhere, the Everton v City game wasn’t actually postponed due to lack of available players.

It had to be postponed because there had been positive results in a scenario where positive results require that all players (even those testing negative but who have been in the company of those testing positive) are retested.
Test results take 24 hours and there wasn’t time enough to get the second test results because the scheduling of games by the authorities didn’t allow enough time for their own own protocols to be met.
City were keen to play Everton at that point, because Everton had a number of key players missing and were an easy touch at that time.
It was the lack of sufficient time between fixtures, combined with the protocols those those who schedule the fixtures had put in place, that prevented the game from taking place.

What you're describing is close contacts and shit timing. It would have been terrible luck for City there is no question about that, the league had a tough choice and once again they have fudged it. That decision made it a given for every other club to follow suit and we have since seen Fulham and Villa do that. Its early enough in the season to catch up but what happens if Spurs get an outbreak in March? We are already facing 2 rescheduled games and it would be 3 but for the decision made today to play Fulham this week.

Aston Villa played on Friday, they proved they can field a side. If the PL showed some balls in December they would be playing that side again but because they didn't there is no way they can be made play.

 

[Centurions]

Very slippery slope they're on here. Villa proved they have 14 fit players on Friday, are the rules just makey uppie as we go along? Won't be popular here but the PL should have made City's 18/23s play Everton. If nothing else it would show they are taking it serious and help concentrate the minds of clubs who's players are lax in following rules. Half the league must have had players breaking rules at this stage and the other half just haven't been caught.

The horse has bolted at this stage, you can't allow Newcastle, City, Fulham and Villa call off games and then force another club to field kids in March or April which may well be the case when calendar is full.

Martin Samuel sums it up well here.

MARTIN SAMUEL: Footballers' lockdown rule-breaking must be stopped

MARTIN SAMUEL - CHIEF SPORTS WRITER: It's idiocy to post photos and place illegal events in the public domain. Everyone involved must have known what they were doing was wrong.

www.google.com

They ARE making it up as they go, thought that was obvious by now TBH. They want to keep the cash cow going as long as possible before the Government step in and call it quits.

I personally wouldn't have minded if we'd had to play a mix of the U18s & U23s, hell they might have won regardless. You're presuming that it's only the idiots breaking rules that has caused outbreaks, that's not necessarily the case every time BTW.

 

[OccupiedPalestineBlues]

What you're describing is close contacts and shit timing. It would have been terrible luck for City there is no question about that, the league had a tough choice and once again they have fudged it. That decision made it a given for every other club to follow suit and we have since seen Fulham and Villa do that. Its early enough in the season to catch up but what happens if Spurs get an outbreak in March? We are already facing 2 rescheduled games and it would be 3 but for the decision made today to play Fulham this week.

Aston Villa played on Friday, they proved they can field a side. If the PL showed some balls in December they would be playing that side again but because they didn't there is no way they can be made play.

I was responding to your errant claim that City should have played Everton, because City had enough players, by pointing out that the game wasn’t postponed due to player numbers but because there wasn’t enough time between fixtures to carry out the testing necessary to provide a reasonable degree of certainty that virus wasn’t spread between football clubs.

It wasn’t due to player numbers, it was due to the risks presented by the failed tests and impossibility of completing the retests under the established protocols.
This is about the safety of players, ground staff, the frontline workers in the NHS and everybody’s families. Nothing was ‘fudged’ because there wasn’t a choice and it didn’t set a precedent for other clubs.

btw, I wasn’t having a pop at you for your poorly informed rant on the topic (we‘re all mortal, so we all get the wrong end of the stick and go off on one sometimes), I was trying to put you on the path of enlightenment (as others helpfully do to me sometimes) before you confuse others who also don’t understand the situation.

It’s not complicated but some of the newspaper reports have gone off at a deliberate tangent to get clicks and thus there are confused people thinking player numbers are the issue whereas it’s the need to not kill people that‘s behind the postponements wherever 14 players are actually available.

 

[bobbyowenquiff]

Very slippery slope they're on here. Villa proved they have 14 fit players on Friday, are the rules just makey uppie as we go along? Won't be popular here but the PL should have made City's 18/23s play Everton. If nothing else it would show they are taking it serious and help concentrate the minds of clubs who's players are lax in following rules. Half the league must have had players breaking rules at this stage and the other half just haven't been caught.

The horse has bolted at this stage, you can't allow Newcastle, City, Fulham and Villa call off games and then force another club to field kids in March or April which may well be the case when calendar is full.

Martin Samuel sums it up well here.

MARTIN SAMUEL: Footballers' lockdown rule-breaking must be stopped

MARTIN SAMUEL - CHIEF SPORTS WRITER: It's idiocy to post photos and place illegal events in the public domain. Everyone involved must have known what they were doing was wrong.

www.google.com

The City situation was different. We played the previous match with two players missing but on the day of the Everton match (a few hours before kick-off) a load more positive tests came in. The bubble was compromised and City had to test everyone at the club and shut their training ground on medical advice. They were instructed not to travel to Everton and spread the virus. We didn't know the full extent of the outbreak till the following day. There was no choice and the PL stopped us playing.

 

[CC1]

The City situation was different. We played the previous match with two players missing but on the day of the Everton match (a few hours before kick-off) a load more positive tests came in. The bubble was compromised and City had to test everyone at the club and shut their training ground on medical advice. They were instructed not to travel to Everton and spread the virus. We didn't know the full extent of the outbreak till the following day. There was no choice and the PL stopped us playing.

This is exactly the point missed by the criticism in the media. The problem wasn’t whether we had sufficient players to field v Toffees but rather, were we in danger of passing the virus on to Everton players. This is more important

 

[The Stockport Iniesta]

Very slippery slope they're on here. Villa proved they have 14 fit players on Friday, are the rules just makey uppie as we go along? Won't be popular here but the PL should have made City's 18/23s play Everton. If nothing else it would show they are taking it serious and help concentrate the minds of clubs who's players are lax in following rules. Half the league must have had players breaking rules at this stage and the other half just haven't been caught.

The horse has bolted at this stage, you can't allow Newcastle, City, Fulham and Villa call off games and then force another club to field kids in March or April which may well be the case when calendar is full.

Martin Samuel sums it up well here.

MARTIN SAMUEL: Footballers' lockdown rule-breaking must be stopped

MARTIN SAMUEL - CHIEF SPORTS WRITER: It's idiocy to post photos and place illegal events in the public domain. Everyone involved must have known what they were doing was wrong.

www.google.com

Nope, City wanted to play but we didn't know who else was infected amongst the squad and staff, we also had young players who were positive, and other cases were found after the Everton postponement, but hey fuck it, force City to play with the possibility of spreading the virus more and passing it on to Everton.

 

[MAG]