The Premier League Thread

Somebody on here said the other day that if the Premier League started up again before this thing is well and truly over, they would cancel their Sky subscription and make it clear to the club that they wouldn’t get another penny out of them until they saw sense. If enough people did that the priorities might just be restored.

 

I don't subscribe, but for some reason let me in

Football's return may seem unpalatable but the survival of the game depends on it
SAM WALLACE
CHIEF FOOTBALL WRITER
Sam Wallace
2 MAY 2020 • 5:20PM

Premier League clubs have been told the remaining 92 matches of the 2019-20 season
Clubs are facing a huge hit to their finances if the season cannot be completed
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
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.

Premier League clubs have been told the remaining 92 matches of the 2019-20 season
Players might be required to cover their faces
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.

 

I suspect they will try to remove the relegation element to bribe threatened clubs into agreeing to the neutral ground option.
I think they'll then agree an expanded PL for next year with extra relegation places over the next 3 seasons to bring things back into line.
It will make the whole thing a farce though. Teams that would be fighting like rabid dogs to avoid the drop would suddenly stroll around the pitch trying hard not to break sweat, or touch anyone. Those CL and Europa places are far from settled. Sheff U, Wolves and even Arse and Burnley could all feel a bit cheated if games go against them. Spuds could be funny though.
It will just be a "Process" to suck up the broadcasting £££ for this season, then the arguing will start about the next.
When you try to account for player contracts, or protests against playing, or what happens if a high profile player gets and dies of the virus in this period, it's silly.

 

Well if they are going to go bust if they don't start up then what difference would it make if some people cancelled subscriptions etc. It is either start up and lose some customers or don't start and not exist

 

Because of the money factor the only clubs voting no to completing the season will be the bottom 5/6 who could go down. Everyone else will vote yes to completing the season, as long as some way which is government approved can be worked out. Tom pointed out that 14 out of 20 need to vote yes on something for it to happen so I'd say it is likely the season will be finished

 

Unless some players stop it.

 

Don't really know how they could to be honest, a mass strike or something. Some may choose to sit out the last games, I'd assume this will breach their contracts and there would be consequences from that. However the season finishes is going to be farcical tbh, Only about half the teams will be trying/bothered at all as they are the only ones with anything to potentially play for, the others will just be going through the motions. Think when teams are in holiday mode usually but probably times it by 10 in the current circumstances.

If some players opt not to play clubs might just put out any 11 they can just to complete the season so they get the TV money. No idea if anything is written into that contract about strong teams etc

 

This may already have been mentioned, but the 'New Normal', should this current situation ever be brought under control, is that 'Social Distancing' will become the norm.
What then, of the entire 'Matchday Experience'? No large groups of people in pubs, etc, and every person may need to continue their 2 metre separation from anyone else. For some clubs this may not be a change, but how and when will crowds ever be able to congregate to watch football, or any activity, indoors or out? Will sport, including football, become TV only? Matches will be played in empty stadia, and any 'roar of the crowd' will simply be edited in, to provide 'atmosphere'.

In short, what does the future hold for any mass participation event, unless and until a vaccine ,or similar, is provided, to innoculate the population?

 

There was a leak from the Bristol Rovers whatsapp group of their manager giving a briefing on what had been discussed in the latest football league meeting, He says they weren't expecting to be playing in front of crowds til January 2021 at the earliest, probably more likely when there is a vaccine.

I have a mate who works in the council and is part of some strategy meetings etc and he told me a couple of weeks ago that they were looking at June next year for letting people back into stadiums/concerts/festivals etc

 

So entertainment, especially getting a 'fix' of Saints games, will consist of watching recordings of previous matches, whilst wearing my red and white shirt. Or yellow for away games.

 

Which is why I am struggling to see an alternative to cancelling the season, which I can accept.

Completing the season at neutral grounds etc but with the threat of relegation removed, is something I would support in favour of completing the season at neutral grounds etc and with relegation still live. (I don't like either idea. But I much prefer the former to the latter.)

But as you say, that would make matches somewhat farcical. Granted, every season has three or four teams who down-tools for the final five to ten games of the season, because they have nothing to play for and mentally are on their summer holidays already. But not half the entire league!

In terms of the on-field issues, all restarting the season in that fashion would amount to is deciding who qualifies for Europe, and the formal placing of Liverpool's crown. For the sake of that, I think there are alternatives to playing all remaining 92 matches. Just give Liverpool the title, give Leicester a CL place, and maybe play introduce some sort of play-off system for the other European places. As a random example, 9th plays 10th, with the winner progressing to play 8th, and so on. At least that would meaning to those games (and only a very small number would be needed).

Of course, it's the off-field issue of money as to why those 92 games would all be played in full, despite half the league having little material interest in the final results of those matches (where relegation is removed).

 

It doesn't stack up for the efl though. Cancel the season or leave it barren and pickbit up at the same point in March 21. Plus the risk to players and staff is zero risk. The idea of playing at a neutral venue is unlikely to be supported by the bottom six sides.

 

Yeah it's probably unlikely but it would only need a largeish group from one team to start a snowball effect imo.


I believe there is something in regulations about playing your strongest available side in League games. Whatever that means.

 

In the grand scheme of things football is not important. There are other more important industries whose problems are going to impact on a far greater number of people.

 

That was my thought, I struggle to think of anything more boring.

It's obvious the desperation to complete the season is distorting most chairman's thinking. Just by chance there will be C19 casualties amongst the players, how that adds to the enjoyment of a sporting spectacular escapes me.

I suggest it'll be more fun completing the fixtures using one of these -

 

All those businesses that are being asked to fall back on their cash reserves..... but it’s ok for football to spend every penny it gets ahead of actually getting it and the “have “ to finish its season because otherwise they go bust.

I have loved this game all my life but more and more I have wanted the money bubble to burst and the “game” come back to us.

maybe this is just the bursting.

 

My sentiments exactly. Covid-19 might just be the catalyst the game needs to get rid of the billionaire culture that the Premier League brought in.

 

I completely get why the bottom 6 would argue heavily for no relegation - why wouldn't they!

But at the same time, if games go ahead and there is no relegation then ultimately there is far less tension and suspense around a lot of the games. And the whole thing no longer only feels dangerous/insensitive/foolhardy (delete as appropriate for your own views), but also pointless.

For most sides (Saints included) it becomes a glorified pre-season. Yes there's some prize money on offer depending on final position, but really I won't be fussed if we finish 11th or 20th if we restart under those conditions.

 

The only way to make it 'interesting' is to have a handicap system for points next year.

So for example, Liverpool (who will win) start on 0 points, 2nd place on -3, 3rd on -6 and so on. No relegation, but a crap performance hinders your next season