Football & Coronavirus [READ MOD NOTE IN FIRST POST - updated 06-05-20]

noodler

recyclebin wrote: »

We have not heard much about the 19% to have got symptoms but have not died. Have they been left with life changing side effects?

There was a tweet over the weekend suggesting quite a proportion report losing their sense of smell.

I didn't look into it so if it's bollox then I apologise.

Lord TSC

noodler wrote: »

There was a tweet over the weekend suggesting quite a proportion report losing their sense of smell.

I didn't look into it so if it's bollox then I apologise.

AFAIK, a temporary loss of small or taste is reported in 30% of people who suffer symptoms.

NIMAN

I heard a discussion on the radio the other day about how efforts are being made to get the EPL season finished out, all the ideas and plans etc.

Maybe the football people need to catch themselves on and realise that there are more important things?

And I say that as a football fan.

8-10

NIMAN wrote: »

I heard a discussion on the radio the other day about how efforts are being made to get the EPL season finished out, all the ideas and plans etc.

Maybe the football people need to catch themselves on and realise that there are more important things?

And I say that as a football fan.

In fairness there's more important things than the job I do but the company still expects me to turn up and do it. It's good that the EPL have people still employed to work on ideas than laying them off

CSF

sugarman wrote: »

Why? They still need to plan for the future of the game, be it now, next week, next month or next year. Whenever it may resume.

Its not like its hurting anyone or taking up resources. Its probably a few lads at home on Skype conference calls shooting off ideas.

Absolutely. The ‘there’s more important things than this right now’ nonsense is so dumb. There are more important things right now than me playing Resident Evil 2 in my jocks and yet here we are.

noodler

CSF wrote: »

Absolutely. The ‘there’s more important things than this right now’ nonsense is so dumb. There are more important things right now than me playing Resident Evil 2 in my jocks and yet here we are.

Love it.

CrabRevolution

NIMAN wrote: »

I heard a discussion on the radio the other day about how efforts are being made to get the EPL season finished out, all the ideas and plans etc.

Maybe the football people need to catch themselves on and realise that there are more important things?

And I say that as a football fan.

What do you suggest they do instead? Put on some scrubs and start treating patients in their local hospital? Assemble homemade ventilators?

If they were advocating that we ignore the disease or scale back our efforts against it in order to focus on sport, I could understand the "there's more important things than football" angle.

They could do as you want and stop all efforts at organising the PL tomorrow, and it would achieve absolutely nothing in the fight against Covid 19. But their job is to organise the Premier League, so they may as well try to organise it while they've nothing better to be doing.

noodler

NIMAN wrote: »

I heard a discussion on the radio the other day about how efforts are being made to get the EPL season finished out, all the ideas and plans etc.

Maybe the football people need to catch themselves on and realise that there are more important things?

And I say that as a football fan.

Their job man

Mitch Connor

If it is possible for football to return safely, even behind closed doors, it should be welcomed rather than used as a stick to beat cause 'there are more important things'.

There will ALWAYS be more important things than football. ALWAYS and FOREVER.

But football is escapism. a distraction. a hobby to be enjoyed etc.

Who TF wouldn't want a distraction from whats going on at the moment.

It can't come back right now - but I would fully support the idea that the people in charge are trying to figure out the best way it can return rather than just giving up on football as NIMAN would want.

Hodors Appletart

How can football return safely, behind closed doors?

Do you think club medical staff are going to hang around an empty stadium on the off chance a player gets injured, when their colleagues are off fighting a war in the hospitals?

Mitch Connor

Hodors Appletart wrote: »

How can football return safely, behind closed doors?

Do you think club medical staff are going to hang around an empty stadium on the off chance a player gets injured, when their colleagues are off fighting a war in the hospitals?

Did i say it was returning tomorrow?

Do you think we will be in this state forever?

0gac3yjefb5sv7

There's no reason they can't have it back soon enough.

Give it a few weeks & then test everyone before each game & proceed on that basis.

Mitch Connor

Pheonix10 wrote: »

There's no reason they can't have it back soon enough.

Give it a few weeks & then test everyone before each game & proceed on that basis.

the issue in a few weeks is, as said about, the supports needed around a game. Could be difficult to justify.

Regardless of what football could do, they need to do it with respect to what else is happening within the England/UK (from a PL perspective).

Football can only return once some level of normality is seen in daily life. It can return before a vaccine (imo), but it can only return when there is a public confidence that the issue is under control and dramatically improving (imo).

Hodors Appletart

Hodors Appletart wrote: »

How can football return safely, behind closed doors?

Do you think club medical staff are going to hang around an empty stadium on the off chance a player gets injured, when their colleagues are off fighting a war in the hospitals?

Agreed. All depends on when things return to normality.

With the way the UK is handling it one could say "how long is a piece of string?"

Mitch Connor

It is also likely that football could return in a behind closed doors format before it returns 'normally'.

I think you will far quicker be at a point when general work life has returned, and the NHS is dealing with it more similarly to seasonal Flu, but mass gatherings of thousands of people is still not advised/allowed.

gimli2112

CSF wrote: »

Absolutely. The ‘there’s more important things than this right now’ nonsense is so dumb. There are more important things right now than me playing Resident Evil 2 in my jocks and yet here we are.

I agree wholeheartedly with your opening statement. Your conclusion however created a mental image none of us wanted to see.

CSF

gimli2112 wrote: »

I agree wholeheartedly with your opening statement. Your conclusion however created a mental image none of us wanted to see.

You can’t speak for everyone!!!

8-10

Mitch Connor wrote: »

It is also likely that football could return in a behind closed doors format before it returns 'normally'.

Yep I think it will have to. Even then it will be a new normal and there might be additional restrictions going to games

They might used the completion of the existing European leagues as a way of testing out New protocols and then focus on a full new league season

Harry Palmr

https://www.theguardian.com/football/live/2020/mar/24/england-v-germany-euro-96-semi-final-live

~Rebel~

Mitch Connor wrote: »

It is also likely that football could return in a behind closed doors format before it returns 'normally'.

I think you will far quicker be at a point when general work life has returned, and the NHS is dealing with it more similarly to seasonal Flu, but mass gatherings of thousands of people is still not advised/allowed.

This is it exactly... there won't be a day when everything is suddenly fine and we all flock out of our houses into a world just as it was before. There will be a gradual escalation, as people are allowed to go to low-density workplaces and small gatherings of friends, but not allowed to go to gigs and clubs etc. Step by step measures will slacken off as we slowly find our way back to greater numbers of people being allowed to come together. So it makes sense that at some point it will be safe for behind-closed-doors football to return, before it's yet safe for 40,000 people to be in the stands watching them.

NIMAN

Mitch Connor wrote: »

Did i say it was returning tomorrow?

Do you think we will be in this state forever?

The discussion i heard was guys trying to finish out this season.

F..k this season...They were talking about May and June for matches....check How it's all going in the UK in May and June and get back to me if playing out the epl sounds like a decent thing to do.

noodler

NIMAN wrote: »

The discussion i heard was guys trying to finish out this season.

F..k this season...They were talking about May and June for matches....check How it's all going in the UK in May and June and get back to me if playing out the epl sounds like a decent thing to do.

**** next season starting on time too tbh.

No point in voiding this season if next season is fecked anyway.

~Rebel~

NIMAN wrote: »

The discussion i heard was guys trying to finish out this season.

F..k this season...They were talking about May and June for matches....check How it's all going in the UK in May and June and get back to me if playing out the epl sounds like a decent thing to do.

Don't worry about May or June, that's all sort of irrevelent to the point. Football will be gone for x amount of time. X remains the same regardless what you intend to do after. The only question is what do you do after. IMO, the pros of finishing off the season we're already 75% of the way through outweigh the cons. No point in thinking too far ahead and worrying about how it'll impact the following season, since the following season is almost certainly going to be impacted regardless.

Solve one problem at a time. Finish this season, then take a short break, and play the next season. And if it happened to work out that it was possible to start the "20/21 season" in January or February, that actually solves a lot of problems, since we have a winter world cup coming up anyway, so it gets everything on track for that. But even if it doesn't, football is football, and whether the matches played count for the current season or the next one, it's still football. So just carry on from where we left off.

All the little complications, like lapsing contracts can be solved easier than the upheaval of scrapping a year. Which the PL obviously thinks also, since they've extended this season indefinitely.

MD1990

https://twitter.com/English_AS/status/1243115575787819009

More than a club apparently

MD1990

MD1990 wrote: »

https://twitter.com/English_AS/status/1243115575787819009

More than a club apparently

Compare and contrast with Leeds...

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soccer/english-soccer/leeds-players-to-defer-wages-to-ensure-club-s-staff-are-paid-1.4212849

Leeds’ players, management and senior staff have volunteered to defer their wages for the foreseeable future.

The Championship leaders — seven points clear of third with nine games to play when the season was halted by the coronavirus pandemic — say they have made the move so that all non-football staff can be paid during the sport’s shutdown.

Director of football Victor Orta said that his players and head coach Marcelo Bielsa had “demonstrated an incredible sense of unity and togetherness” in making the offer, at a time when the club is losing “several millions of pounds a month”.

In a statement entitled ‘Side Before Self, Every Time’, Leeds’ first-team squad said: “Leeds United is a family, this is the culture that has been created by everyone at the club, from the players and the board to the staff and the supporters in the stands.

0gac3yjefb5sv7

IF the season is to be completed by the 30th of June, wouldn't that mean football would need to start early May then behind closed doors?

Zaph

The English FA have declared the season void for all non-league football below the 6th tier, i.e. everything gone from two steps below the National League (what was the Conference). Unsurprisingly some teams aren't happy. South Shields are 12 points clear in their division and are already threatening legal action.

citytillidie

Zaph wrote: »

The English FA have declared the season void for all non-league football below the 6th tier, i.e. everything gone from two steps below the National League (what was the Conference). Unsurprisingly some teams aren't happy. South Shields are 12 points clear in their division and are already threatening legal action.

All football in England below the three divisions that make up the National League will end immediately and all results will be expunged.

It means there will be no promotion or relegation in these leagues.

The same will happen in the women's game below the Women's Super League and Championship level.

However, the National League, National League North and South, WSL and Women's Championship will continue towards a conclusion "as quickly as possible".

The Football Association said it was "reviewing all options" to complete the men's FA Cup, which had reached the quarter-final stage, and other cup competitions.

The coronavirus pandemic has decimated all sports, with fixtures suspended earlier this month.

Zebra3

Pheonix10 wrote: »

IF the season is to be completed by the 30th of June, wouldn't that mean football would need to start early May then behind closed doors?

I can't see football in England restarting by then, never mind the season being finished.

0gac3yjefb5sv7

Zebra3 wrote: »

I can't see football in England restarting by then, never mind the season being finished.

I think it will be back in May behind closed doors. The UK should peak in the next 2/3 weeks... guessing of course...and hoping.

Zaph

Pheonix10 wrote: »

I think it will be back in May behind closed doors. The UK should peak in the next 2/3 weeks... guessing of course...and hoping.

The UK is about 2 weeks behind Italy. There's no suggestion that Italy has peaked yet, and they instigated a lockdown far earlier than the UK. I think it'll be longer than 2/3 weeks before the UK peaks tbh, and I can't see any football there before June at the very earliest.

~Rebel~

Pheonix10 wrote: »

IF the season is to be completed by the 30th of June, wouldn't that mean football would need to start early May then behind closed doors?

It won’t be, which is why they’ve already extended the season indefinately.
(I know you said ‘if’, but I think at this stage it’s pretty close to an impossibility)

eh i dunno

All lower leagues in England were null and voided today. So everything from the 7th tier down.

Iused2likebusts

Older and vulnerable people will be told to stay indoors in a few weeks/ months and the rest will be told to return to work and practice new social distancing measures we have become used to. The world isnt going to be able to continue the current way of life until a vaccine comes out.

ozzy jr

I don't think we'll see much sport this year.

CSF

Iused2likebusts wrote: »

Older and vulnerable people will be told to stay indoors in a few weeks/ months and the rest will be told to return to work and practice new social distancing measures we have become used to. The world isnt going to be able to continue the current way of life until a vaccine comes out.

That would make sense if things stayed as they are. But if cases fly up (and given how testing has gone we may only be at the tip of the iceberg), then they’ll have to adjust accordingly again.

If you hit the 500k cases mark over there, and you probably will, it’s hard to decide on a return to normal life, without being seen as a monster forever.

Genuinely no idea how this ends if they’re genuinely 12-18 months off a vaccine and if they don’t develop an effective treatment.

We'll probably just see hospital treatments getting more and more effective until the vaccine is ready. They are probably already trialing treatments on patients I'd assume.

Iused2likebusts

CSF wrote: »

That would make sense if things stayed as they are. But if cases fly up (and given how testing has gone we may only be at the tip of the iceberg), then they’ll have to adjust accordingly again.

If you hit the 500k cases mark over there, and you probably will, it’s hard to decide on a return to normal life, without being seen as a monster forever.

Genuinely no idea how this ends if they’re genuinely 12-18 months off a vaccine and if they don’t develop an effective treatment.

Id be talking when it gets to china levels of minimal growth and the hospital crisis has passed. That may be a good few months away but come that time countries arent going to be able to keep being as generous with the financial handouts so another strategy will have to be perused. Its tough to get the head around but currently everyone is on lockdown to keep older and vulnerable people safe. Im convinced the next stage will be older and vulnerable people will need to stay in with some safe system of taking care of them implemented while the rest return to work with big changes in our everyday life.

CrabRevolution

We hear a lot about "threatening legal action" if clubs don't get what they want but what would their grounds for suing be?

Even then I'd think the organisers have a pretty solid defence of "we did all we could given the extraordinary circumstances, namely a worldwide pandemic and the biggest prolonged shutdown of normal life since World War 2". They can cite the 10s of thousands of events worldwide which are being cancelled or postponed, and their own efforts to keep going until the last minute.

And I say this as a Liverpool fan, the most prominent case of a club potentially being done out of a title by the pandemic.

Zebra3

6 wrote: »

We'll probably just see hospital treatments getting more and more effective until the vaccine is ready. They are probably already trialing treatments on patients I'd assume.

There is no guarantee a vaccine will ever be created.

Zebra3

Zebra3 wrote: »

There is no guarantee a vaccine will ever be created.

Id say there's a good chance. Until then multiple effective treatments are being tested. We'll get there eventually.

citytillidie

CrabRevolution wrote: »

We hear a lot about "threatening legal action" if clubs don't get what they want but what would their grounds for suing be?

Even then I'd think the organisers have a pretty solid defence of "we did all we could given the extraordinary circumstances, namely a worldwide pandemic and the biggest prolonged shutdown of normal life since World War 2". They can cite the 10s of thousands of events worldwide which are being cancelled or postponed, and their own efforts to keep going until the last minute.

And I say this as a Liverpool fan, the most prominent case of a club potentially being done out of a title by the pandemic.

Sky/BT will be losing customers because there is no sport to watch, they will want to get something back then from the PL for that loss. The government should not be bailing these companies out.

It is a mess what happens if they say scrap this season, but nothing can be played until next year? It is too early to scrap the season. Just have to wait an see

DvB

I'm already coming around to the idea the LOI season that just started wont happen & thats not due to end until November, so I'd have little expectation of anything happening in the UK in that timeframe either.

If theres a solution found (e.g. vaccine) that allows things to resume before then I'd be pleasantly surprised but I'd not be holding my breath either.

CrabRevolution

CrabRevolution wrote: »

We hear a lot about "threatening legal action" if clubs don't get what they want but what would their grounds for suing be?

They spent huge sums of money on the basis that the FA would see the leagues through to the season end, and they had a reasonable expectation (or maybe even a contractual right) that they would be rewarded for their input with promotion, titles etc. The FA played through the 2009 swine flu pandemic when hundreds of thousands died around the world, the 2014 flu where almost 30,000 died in Britain alone etc. And there is no need to cancel leagues right now, at present they can still suspend them.

Guy:Incognito

Clubs may well be more open to ending the season down the line. The calling off of the lower league seems very rushed. We're only 2 weeks in. There was no need to go straight to cancelling , unless it meant saving the clubs from going bust, but I dont see how it would have. Cant see anything to be gained from doing it rather than take a wait and see.
If , a few months down the line , the FA could say "look, we tried everything and we were only left with this option" then you would have clubs more willing to say fair play.

If the PL ends up resuming and being finished at some point, I can see teams in the lower leagues going ape **** that their leagues were scrapped (well, the ones getting promoted anyway :-) )

Zebra3

6 wrote: »

Id say there's a good chance. Until then multiple effective treatments are being tested. We'll get there eventually.

On what basis do you make this claim?

We still haven't got one for HIV.

Zebra3

Zebra3 wrote: »

On what basis do you make this claim?

We still haven't got one for HIV.

The demand for one will make it happen imo. This could potentially kill millions, even tens of millions. World economy will nosedive.

Whats the demand for a HIV vaccine in comparison? There's very effective treatment for HIV these days isn’t there? HIV hasn't caused the disruption Covid 19 has caused in just a few weeks.

ozzy jr

6 wrote: »

The demand for one will make it happen imo. This could potentially kill millions, even tens of millions.

ffs

Maybe it's time people started to demand a cure for cancer.

Hodors Appletart

I don't think there's any vaccine against the other Corona Viruses either, apparently they are difficult enough to vaccinate against.

ozzy jr

ozzy jr wrote: »

ffs

Maybe it's time people started to demand a cure for cancer.

Yep, brilliant comparison ozzy