@lorddulaarsenal wrote:

Thing is I did one of those predictor thingys cos I’ve got a bit of time on my hands and I had City pipping them on goal difference

Yeah I did one of those too and City ended up league winners in mine as well. We'll never know for sure what would have happened. There's just no way to tell.

I can't imagine being impartial and still conceiving Liverpool will never win two more matches.

Just as we'd never hear the end of Pool winning the league, we'd never hear the end of how they were robbed too. Teams should either continue the league in some form (behind closed doors sounds appropriate) or just vote to give Pool the league (which would be brilliant IMO).

banduan wrote:

I can't imagine being impartial and still conceiving Liverpool will never win two more matches.

We will never know. So sad.

Was thinking about what the mayor of Liverpool said on the likelihood of Liverpool fans trying to congregate in spite of lockdown if remaining games were played behind closed doors. If the season was finished in this way but everyone was stuck indoors and unable to share the experience outside of the forum or other video mediums, would it really be enough of a positive distraction as they make out. Obviously there are other considerations on why or why not to finish the season, but wonder if it will overall be of a benefit to fans. I would follow it, but not really care. Imagine that supporters of those clubs at the bottom might even be adversely affected.

Apparently Premier League may be back in June.

Good.

La Liga also aiming for football to return on 12 June

Quincy Abeyie wrote:

Apparently Premier League may be back in June.

Have the bottom six relaxed their position on relegation?

Guess they'll actually have to prove that they belong in the PL now. Incredible how quickly things changed by the way, not long ago some on here thought this and next season might be cancelled.

I think the important thing is to divorce yourself from fandom and view football as another industry, where there are workers who need to earn their living and businesses that need to survive. The rest of the world is grappling with these questions and figuring out how to make it work. I guess what football is doing is somewhat equivalent to the restaurant industry (re)opening for take-outs only until it is safe enough to allow a few customers on-premise.

Every industry faces risks. In Botswana today, which has managed to limit to 22 cases from 10,000 tests, the government is freaking out because a South African cross-border truck driver tested positive when delivering goods to supermarkets from South Africa. They've picked up attendance registers and employee lists at the supermarkets he visited and checked him into a corona hospital. It seems milataristic and over-the-top but I think they'll need the same approach with the football leagues if they are to just get this football season completed.

Yeah, those views were always detached from reality. They were always going to try and finish the season.

I do wonder how it will pan out in practice though. From entire squads potentially having to go into quarantine to the rate of infection going back up in the country, there's a lot of hurdles to actually getting it done. I wonder if players will have to continue training separately, or at least in smaller clustered groups?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/52579299

What a shitty article. It says that they have to repay to broadcasters because the matches are played at different times and without fans at the stadium, but it doesn't mention a word about what that matters. Won't every game be televised now? If anything, more people will watch games on television.

Games will be played at weird times, in empty neutral venues and there’s also talk of making some games free to air. There’s a very good case to say it will adversely effect broadcasters. Ultimately it’s about broadcasters trying to recoup some of the big money they’ve put in and I’m guessing from a legal standpoint they have a pretty good case.

If your organisation has purchased broadcast rights it's not like you want the league or its clubs to collapse unless you've been led into an absolute crisis, so they will find a financial settlement one way or another.

The neutral venue behind closed doors scenario sounds hollow.

I don't think I'll be at the level of boredom required to be interested in watching any of it.

They don't really care about the games any more, they just want their contractual obligation to be over and done with. If they could get away with playing the entire season on Hackney Marshes, they would.

I might watch them if they were played in Hackney Marshes.

I mean if they don't need to accommodate a crowd they could get creative about where they play, somewhere more interesting than an empty echoing stadium 

Burnwinter wrote:

If your organisation has purchased broadcast rights it's not like you want the league or its clubs to collapse unless you've been led into an absolute crisis, so they will find a financial settlement one way or another.

The TV companies that own Premier league rights will have clauses that allow them to claw back their TV monies in the event of an an Act of God - and Covid-19 should so qualify. They would be eager to recoup these as advertising dollars have evaporated. 

Even if the Premier League manages to run all the games in the next 2 months, it is highly unlikely that the TV stations will get anywhere near the originally anticipated advertising $. Lots of media companies are currently firing, furloughing or closing down.