Or a lottery ticket, with the possibility of untold wealth. Especially if you bought a (winning) ticket with £2 out of your winnings, every week. By the end of the month, you could have ..... 27p, probably
But if those six vote together - and the indications are that Villa, Brighton, Watford, West Ham and Bmouth are all against neutral grounds (Norwich, at least in public, seem to have been very quiet) - then it does only take one of the other 14 to vote with them. Can one of them persuaded to? I would like to hope so - especially if it is us - but wouldn't be confident enough to put money on it. (One reason why Norwich might be quiet, is because other than abandoning the season completely, playing matches at neutral grounds might just be their best chance of survival. Under any sort of mathematical modelling, they go down. So unless the season is cancelled, they need to save themselves on the pitch. And possibly the only way to make up a six point gap is to throw in as much upheaval as possible. Their dire position means that they have less to lose/risk than the other five.)
I wouldn't be surprised if there are quite a lot of clubs who are open to voting for neutral grounds, but think it's too early to vote yes. Whether because of operational uncertainties (there are still so many questions, and their meeting on Monday is less than 24 hours after the PM's statement), or negative public perception. 25 May I believe is the absolute deadline to agree, as per UEFA.
If it was me I wouldn't want to vote on anything until I knew the plan around people testing positive. Seems odd that haven't announced anything on that yet tbh.
Exactly. What if say Pukki tests positive for Norwich and has to miss the last games. Really put them at a disadvantage.
As long as the coin starts to roll back in I dont really think the PL will give to much of a **** over something silly like that.
You could lose an entire team. As close as they need to be in the locker room without masks it could spread through quickly. Don’t see how it would be fair for a team to have to play their kids because everyone else is sick. Can’t call that competition, although the money would be the same.
A third Brighton player has tested positive for the corona ... Still pressing ahead for a PL restart though
On the subject of neutral grounds, I can understand why the bottom 6 are so against it, based on historical facts. Since the Premier League started, 67% of all wins by teams finishing the season in the bottom 6, have been at home. How much of that can be attributed to the fact that it is their own pitch, and how much is attributable to the actual support is debatable. Maybe using neutral grounds, with a soundtrack reflecting home status, could be a way forward. Wouldn’t be that great for us, unless the groans and moans at misplaced passes could be cut out.
Could give each STH for the home team a microphone at home, with their sounds beng played out from a seat somewhere in the neutral ground.
I think the only “given” is the government backing it. Anything to get the country talking about something other than the coronavirus and their handling of it. Any or all of the other points are going to have some opposition.
Forget needing just 1 side to vote with the bottom 6. I see that the Telegraph are saying up to 12 PL clubs are against it.
According to BBC (champions of truth, etc) at least 6 clubs are against using neutral venues. As such, the Premier League have proposed using home venues, but the government will almost certainly be against this, due to policing issues, from large numbers of home fans. The 6 clubs will then be able to say that they were not against the league completing properly, it was the government who said that it couldn't happen. So, all clubs stay in Premier League, no-one is to blame, and we start all over again, sometime in the future. Probably.