Coronavirus could prevent Liverpool from winning the Premier League title

[dockers_strike]

52 minutes ago, JohnnyH said:

It might just be me. But the journalists I follow on twitter seem to be changing their tune. For example, Oliver Holt tonight having a pop at all the fans calling for the season to be voided “appear to be fans of Everton and Manchester Utd. I wonder what the connection could be”. And there’s been more of that today. 
 

Even John Cross, who’s constantly spinning the line about how can we think of this while people die, has started talking, about a canx season being the end of so many clubs.

 

Sa another saying that we should just finish the season in September/October as what’s the rush?

 

Even the bottom 6 clubs who are challenging this are all being called out as self-serving hypocrites. 
 

Kind of feels like that Athletic article has changed minds. Or something has. But there’s been a shift. 

Holt sounds like he's backstroking quicker than an Olympic Gold medalist in his latest article https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-8280993/OLIVER-HOLT-desperate-football-rush-happy-risk-causing-damage.html

 

The latest is League One and Two look to be on the verge of cancelling. The Championship want to start up and resolve promotion with the PL saying if there's no relegation, there's no incentive to play or at the very least, be competitive.

 

As i mentioned before, clubs in the PL going bust will focus minds. Maybe a few PL clubs think they could avoid paying back Sky, BT, Amazon but the penny's dropped the overseas rights, which are more than the domestic rights under this contract, will not be as forgiving?

[DalyanPete]

3 hours ago, No2 said:

I've come up with a solution. Number one thing is health and safety, so we wait the 3 or 4 months that will take to satisfy the baying mob. UEFA won't wait that long to start next season's competition so we simply let them start while English clubs sit out this years competitions. That is the those that can afford to pay the most paying the most and everyone else (85 other clubs) unaffected. Everyone plays all their games and get promoted or relegated based purley on what happens on the pitch. 

 

You then use the 12 or so free mid weeks to catch up on whatever game a are due.

Yea, but you sound like you have put some thought in to that. 

[DalyanPete]

2 hours ago, col06 said:

Saw this just now on my phone probably a mistake

 

0-5 ha ha ha

[DalyanPete]

1 hour ago, dockers_strike said:

Despite her publicised backtracking when she first came out with this null and void bullshit, all she has done is play to the gallery and say of course she didnt mean it. Yet here she is again, spouting the same old bullshit but in another way.

 

I used to have a bit of a soft spot for West Ham because although they'd won fuck all, they did have some quality players back in the day with Moore, Hirst, Peters and, who could forget Clyde Best? But they can fuck off now, I hope they and a few other PL clubs go bust.

 

It doesnt matter how you dress this up, they are cheating to make sure they stay in the PL for another season and to make it worse, they are hiding behind the virus. If they get their way, you know these knuckle draggers will be taunting us that we didnt win the league while keeping their faces straight about being in a league they likely would have been relegated from.

 

Just give us the fucking trophy or dont. Either shit or get off the fucking pot. Im getting tired of their fucking about. It's like the first time you popped your cherry and the girl was like 'you want to put your dick in me? Well maybe I'll let you and maybe I wont.' In some ways, I hope a load of fucking clubs do go bankrupt, no doubt they'll blame us for that as well.

Quality analogy on the cherry!

 

[dockers_strike]

Norwich, Villa, Bournemouth, Watford, Brighton and West Ham. The 6 who threaten to stop the re start.

 

Football is facing a crisis so severe that no-one can say for certain what will survive and what will not. The 20 clubs that dialled in for the Premier League shareholders’ conference call on Friday might be considered the strongest specimens in this particular struggle for life but even some of them will harbour doubts about their future.

They have to get the games back on again - at the very least they have to try to give hope to the broadcasters who pay the bill for the whole show. It can be unedifying, as the world grapples with the era of the coronavirus, that football seems to be shouldering its way to the front of the queue but what then will be the alternative?

That scenario is plain. Football faces collapsing under a £1.137 billion deficit in the Premier League alone – contractual debt unpaid in wages and transfer fees, renegotiated broadcast contracts, the draining of market confidence that eventually leads to a curdling of the whole system. It is not simply about paying the vast salaries of the Premier League stars, although those contracts are about as easy to unpick as a nuclear submarine.

It is about the £140 million of solidarity money that flows down annually through the Football League system, the next payment already advanced. It is the tax yield estimated at £3.3 billion for the 2016-2017 season alone. The grassroots football supported by leagues and the Football Association, itself facing unprecedented losses of up to £300 million. The canker will spread from the top and once it has taken grip who knows what can be saved?

 

What was remarkable about Friday’s Premier League meeting, from the view of some attending, was the readiness of some clubs to abandon the season without first attempting to save it. These are the clubs that fear relegation more than anything, and whose anxieties threaten the league that finances the rest of the game.        

Games will be played at 10 neutral venues according to new proposals Credit: Getty Images

This group of around six clubs cannot impose their will through voting where a quorum of 14 is needed to carry a motion. Instead those who do not want to see 2019-2020 played can sabotage by other means – amplifying fears, generating resistance among players and staff and encouraging the kind of doubt that makes everything feel impossible. To put it simply, it would be hard to complete 2019-2020 with all 20 clubs on board. It could be impossible with rebels in the group.

Those resisting the attempt to play games are currently marching under the flag of competitive integrity. They say that playing the remaining rounds of games at neutral grounds is out of the question. To which the answer is that the notion is certainly far from ideal. But when placed in the context of global economic depression, the collapse of the most lucrative broadcast contracts in the history of English football and potentially seismic knock-on effects, they are quibbling over the best way to attach a hosepipe while the building burns.

 

We will all have to adjust to a new normal over the coming months. If neutral grounds for the remaining league fixtures offends you then wait until you see what eating out might entail once restaurants re-open, or having to test one’s self before boarding public transport. The same problems will exist next season but first the clubs have to survive long enough to play next season. It may yet not be possible to finish 2019-2020 but there has to be a unified attempt to do so to give football’s chief wealth creator a chance for life.

The call-it-off brigade says it is all about money. They are right. Unfortunately football cannot recalibrate itself mid-global pandemic as a game in which the stars travel to games on the tram in return for a modest wage, and all the Woodbines they can smoke. Those £9.2 billion of broadcast contracts have been budgeted for to the last cent. In fact, for decades football has been run by those who scheme, borrow and live on the edge of their means. The great clubs of the 1950s and the 1960s and the 1970s would have struggled to continue operating with no crowds through the turnstiles for a year. All that is different now is the scale of the deficit.

Players might be required to cover their faces Credit: PA

What constitutes a safe time to play football? Waiting for a vaccine, as the epidemiologist Professor Mark Woolhouse told the New Scientist last month, is “not a strategy, it’s a hope”. Should we hold off until the death toll reaches zero before the game resumes, regardless of whether that target comes before or after Phil Foden’s 35th birthday? The hygiene and testing protocols for training grounds are so strict that the greatest danger to players will come from infection at home. Of course, once the games begin then there will be more variables.

 

Modern football can be tough to love. This is not an easy sell to the public but there is so much at stake which is why, as the weeks roll on and the stadiums remain closed, football has an obligation to try to save itself within the boundaries of what government considers appropriate. Few industries have the resources to protect their own employees as football does. What else can it do but try?

The alternative is, most likely, for the game to die waiting. If there is no attempt to complete the current season then the clubs can expect the broadcasters to renegotiate the remaining two years on the current rights cycle. They will do so knowing that the clubs are desperate, starved of revenue and for the first time since the explosion in the values of rights, the power will be entirely on the other side of the table. Already in France the broadcaster Canal Plus has withheld its last two payments to the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) at the cost of €253 million.

The French season is over and the LFP is reduced to asking its government for a loan to survive. There is a way to complete the English league season, safeguard contracts and keep the money that is the lifeblood of the game flowing. However unpalatable it may feel in the midst of a crisis it is the least worst option.

 

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2020/05/02/footballs-return-may-seem-unpalatable-survival-game-depends/

[redinblack62]

2 hours ago, DalyanPete said:

0-5 ha ha ha

09.00pm.......looks legit to me........

[mike23]

The clubs near the bottom need to be careful. Whether they want to admit it or not, the tv and other contracts they get from being in the premier league are so lucrative entirely because of teams like us, United and Arsenal. They might see this as a get out of jail card to remain on the premier league gravy train for another season, but such short-term opportunism might lead to there not being a gravy train for much longer. The big clubs seem to all want to finish the season because they have the most to lose financially if it doesn't happen, and if they see the other teams going out of their way to deliberately hinder any chance of that happening then they're likely to remember that next time sorting out things like tv deals come up. Perhaps they'll decide that it's time to look at independent tv deals. What sort of money would Sky and BT be offering if a Premier league package only included options like Watford vs Bournemouth?

 

This is of course if most clubs haven't gone bankrupt if they don't find a way resume. I still don't see how next season can happen if this one can't be concluded. Conditions aren't going to be any different by the end of the year, let alone this fabled August all the null and voiders seem to be dreaming of a new season starting in. It may be unpalatable to be talking of football resuming whilst all this is going on, but like it or not it is a business, and I don't see how making plans to try and rescue it is any different from what other businesses are doing at the moment. 

 

[Lee909]

Independent TV deals

Everton would be on Channel 5 and still be the last game shown after the National League highlights

[Elite]

3 hours ago, Lee909 said:

Independent TV deals

Everton would be on Channel 5 and still be the last game shown after the National League highlights

Or Eurosport after the amateur skiing at the Chill Factore.

[TheDrowningMan]

If the big clubs negotiated their own broadcast deals, the simple fact is that the new PL ‘package’ would be worth less than the Championship, which would - collectively - have far bigger, more marketable clubs than the bottom third of the Premier League.

[Barrington Womble]

On 01/05/2020 at 22:01, dockers_strike said:

Amazing isnt it? Never mind all the shouters, no one in the media seem to realise if you cancel this season, next season has to be in danger. It's beyond comprehension no one in the media has mentioned this and, it's taken some PL clubs to point out the obvious.

 

 

It doesn't seem the proper media to me who are doing this. For example last weekend on Sunday supplement they were all in favour of the season finishing . It's just cunts like Morgan and some ex-players. 

On 01/05/2020 at 20:29, dockers_strike said:

 

What 'home' advantage is there in an empty stadium anyway? All PL pitches are now the same size. 

I don't think that is true. 

14 hours ago, Bjornebye said:

West Ham don't have home advantage anymore anyway. Their fans fucking hate the stadium, its a soulless lump of shite. 

Spot on that. What a cunt of a place that is. 

[coachpotato]

There’s nowhere like football to find self serving, hypocritical and biased view points spouted as being the best for everyone else.

It’s been said by some that “ how can you think of playing football while people are in hospital dying of the virus?”, conveniently missing the point that every Saturday (or any day football is being played) there are, sadly, people in hospital dying, and some of a virus.
So does that mean we don’t ever play football again?

Or is there a death count or cause where it’s ok play football?

 

There’s a lot of money being lost in every area of life because of this virus, but the main problem is that the money is being put first in every area of life and not necessarily the people it is affecting.

 

Self serving hypocrites are those that are being heard loudest. The silence from our club, which has much to lose in many ways, is thankfully deafening.

 

 

 

[s(k)aturation]

 

The best of this wonderful season, alas, is behind us.

 

Yeah, we get the two wins (or less, if City slip immediately on resumption).

Behind closed doors.  

At neutral venues.  

We win the League.  

 

But I wouldn't at all be surprised if the lads, weirded out by this whole thing, lose 5 of our remaining games, for instance.  And it all ends up a bit of an anti-climax.

 

Just enjoy and savour what has come already this season.

 

We've been simply, uniquely, magnificent.

 

 

 

[SlugTrail]

17 hours ago, Trumo said:

There is a mindset out there that genuinely believes voiding the current season will kill off the coronavirus, thus ending the pandemic and the lockdowns to get life back on track again. Everything will be absolutely fine for the new season simply because this season will cease to exist. People of this mindset are a drain on the world's resources.

Everton aren't they

[A_S]

I don't mind his overall take on it

 

[Megadrive Man]

9 hours ago, redinblack62 said:

09.00pm.......looks legit to me........

That's in Turkey so they are 2 hours ahead.

[TheDrowningMan]

Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish has entered the conversation:

 

https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/crystal-palace-liverpool-fc-premier-league-project-restart-a4430491.html

 

Quote

"I want to complete the competition for reasons of sporting integrity. I want to crown Liverpool champions and give every other club a fair crack at the best league position they can achieve.

"I certainly don’t want to have difficult conversations about curtailing, voiding and points per game. The ramifications of each are complex and could involve legal challenges that run on for months, if not years.

"But, yes, it is partly about the money. And we should all care about the money. I’ll tell you why. Nobody wins if the Premier League receives less money. Nobody. We are already facing losses no one can quantify — and if we don’t finish the season we are entering uncharted waters."

 

 

[Jimmy Hills Chin]

57 minutes ago, A_S said:

I don't mind his overall take on it

 

Talks a lot of sense generally, this fella.

[dockers_strike]

29 minutes ago, TheDrowningMan said:

Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish has entered the conversation:

 

https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/crystal-palace-liverpool-fc-premier-league-project-restart-a4430491.html

 

 

 

Unlike that complete nob Jordan. The Brighton exec is going big on this must use our own stadium and not a neutral one because of the advantage it gives them.

 

Just checked, Brighton have played 16 home Premier League before the league was suspended. They've won just 5 of those games.

[Creator Supreme]

The latest bullshit is astonishing, we'll complete the season behind closed as long as you don't relegate anyone!!! Fuck off!

 

Absolute shithouses, if you were any good you'd be safe by now! Fuck them off!

[TheDrowningMan]

8 minutes ago, Creator Supreme said:

The latest bullshit is astonishing, we'll complete the season behind closed as long as you don't relegate anyone!!! Fuck off!

 

Absolute shithouses, if you were any good you'd be safe by now! Fuck them off!

Call their bluff. Accept, on the understanding that a significant amount of next season will probably have to be played at neutral venues, and that six teams will be relegated. Then the top clubs can decide amongst themselves to loan a healthy number of squad players to newly promoted teams and strugglers who aren’t playing this game. Might be able to get rid of several shithouse clubs next season that way.

[Creator Supreme]

3 minutes ago, TheDrowningMan said:

Call their bluff. Accept, on the understanding that a significant amount of next season will probably have to be played at neutral venues, and that six teams will be relegated. Then the top clubs can decide amongst themselves to loan a healthy number of squad players to newly promoted teams and strugglers who aren’t playing this game. Might be able to get rid of several shithouse clubs next season that way.

I'd take that, fucking scumbags!

[Bobby Hundreds]

Is that true. If the season gets finished the bottom 3 Should 100 percent be relegated. Using the pandemic to give themselves a reprieve is disgraceful. If they have said we will finish the league as long as there is no relegation they have just admitted they have no concerns about safety. I'd tell them you play or it automatically it goes down as a loss.

[Leyton388]

If the refuse then relegate the twats. If six clubs dont want to play then simply relegate them and promote six clubs from the championship. 

 

West Ham and Brighton would be the first two to go. 

[Captain Howdy]

14 hours ago, JohnnyH said:

It might just be me. But the journalists I follow on twitter seem to be changing their tune. For example, Oliver Holt tonight having a pop at all the fans calling for the season to be voided “appear to be fans of Everton and Manchester Utd. I wonder what the connection could be”. And there’s been more of that today. 
 

Even John Cross, who’s constantly spinning the line about how can we think of this while people die, has started talking, about a canx season being the end of so many clubs.

 

Sa another saying that we should just finish the season in September/October as what’s the rush?

 

Even the bottom 6 clubs who are challenging this are all being called out as self-serving hypocrites. 
 

Kind of feels like that Athletic article has changed minds. Or something has. But there’s been a shift. 

Can’t speak for the rest but Holt has always said that