Football

Heard from a good source this afternoon Football is restarting behind closed doors.

Rumour going round ....

Premier league is back in June. A sport travel agency that manages logistics for some top teams (spurs, city, wolves, newcastle, rangers to name a few).
Has been tasked with arranging hotels and travel for 8 weeks starting mid may.

All premier league teams will play their remaining games at St. George’s Park, behind closed doors and for TV only. The complex will host 2/3 games a day that will be streamed live.

The players will go into isolation mid may at select hotels in the vicinity of st georges and will train at local clubs grounds.

They will not be able to see family and friends during the period of games. Each player will be tested regulary to ensure safety and hotels will be locked down for players only.

Looks like we are going to have a world cup style June with loads of games to watch.

Ohhhhhhhhhh great, lock down was / is bad enough now bleeding non stop football, arghhh

Not everybody's cup of tea but most people have more than one TV nowadays.
By then you will be able to go out and walk and shop as much as you like

i wonder if they will use canned cheering to create a bit of an atmosphere for us armchair fans, otherwise it will be interesting to hear what the players shout at each other aswell as the ref

Seems strange that some leagues (Dutch & French) seem to have cancelled their season, whilst others (hopefully Premiership) are allowed to finish, albeit without fans in attendance - Uefa and Fifa seem to have no idea on what to do next.
Not quite sure why the above leagues were cancelled (presumably citing player safety if stadia are empty with no fans in danger), but they are already talking about starting dates for next season.... noting there will almost certainly be no vaccine available, so players will be no safer in September than they are at present. Even "if" a player in ANY league contract Covid-19 there is no way to prove it was due to football.... just as easily catch it at the supermarket etc.
Wrt Premiership - I do not see a problem in agreeing a method (similar to Duckworth Lewis method in cricket), to decide league positions - but as always it appears that money talks, and Sky / BT will influence things as much as possible.
For lots of teams outside the top flight (including a few in the premiership), they already claim to be close to financial collapse, and rely heavily on gate receipts - so the prospect of playing behind closed doors would destroy them.
Just my humble opinion - for what its worth.....

It’ll destroy them even more if they have to start handing back the money to TV companies, if they don’t fulfil their obligations.

Not sure about the Dutch league, but the French league has ended as their Government have said that all sport is prohibited until September at least.

Latest reports in media suggest talks have commenced to re-start the PL...…

Looks like Dave C initial post above was "on the money"