Match Day Thread Premier League, Cups & Euro Watch

Yeah you’ve got to think the economic hit on teams will reduce some of the transfer fees and wages. Except for the oil clubs...

 

So why not choose the version of ****ed that at least respects existing results? Oh, because Arsenal have none.

 

As I’ve said I’m not that bothered either way. If the season restarts Arsenal have the chance at getting fifth for CL and 3 games to try and win an FA Cup, plus it’ll be good to have some football to watch. If it’s cancelled we get fifth and a CL spot (assuming last seasons positions get used) but miss the chance of the FA Cup. Not much in it as an Arsenal fan.

It just makes more sense to me not to **** up next season to finish a season which is already ****ed up. This season is the one that’s been disrupted and will have all sorts of issues in getting it finished whereas at the moment next season will hopefully be able to go ahead as normal. I don’t see the point in having two ****ed seasons in a row if we can just write off one and have the other go ahead as normal.

 

Why throw away 75% of a season because you hope (against all evidence) that next season will be normal?

I don't see the point in two uncompleted seasons when we could have one definitely completed one at least.

And if/when next season hits a bump do we abandon that, and reward Arsenal with yet another Champions League place they evidently don't deserve?

 

If we are still dealing with coronavirus next season or there is a second wave which results in multiple months removed from the season then yes, we’d have to cancel that as well.

At what point do you think finishing this season stops being this season? If there is a two season gap because of this would you still see finishing this season as actually being part of this season? Different players, different staff, different ages, different levels of fitness etc... if this season is finished with a gap of 3-4 months or longer in the middle of it, it’ll forever go down as a disrupted season that affected the destiny of the clubs in it. Wherever teams finish it’ll be questioned if it would have gone differently without being stopped and started. So the integrity is already ****ed.

 

Clubs already change players during a season. Sometimes they even change managers during a season

Sporting events can always go differenty. The entire point of sport is to respect the way that it actually goes. Otherwise it's the most pointless activity imaginable.

Hypotheticals are irrelevant, let's wait and see when football can be resumed then decide the best course of action based on facts.

 

As I have said above
Could not really give a **** atm about the prem

you are very deluded if you do not understand how this effects the integrity of the competitions

we have no return date so why cancel ?

for someone who is not bothered you seem awfully ...... well bothered

if you want to discuss it - go down to your local lower league club

go and coach some young kids and explain to them why after winning all of their games this season that they are not to win the league because they still had two teams to play

explain to those same children why they don’t get to goto a cup semi final

preface it with there are bigger things going on - which there are but not to some children
Now is the time they need their sport that’s what it is here for
A distraction from our lives to help us to have some fun
Looking at those games back when the game was for the working class - why was it so popular ?
Saint ????

 

But you're basing that on reality. The football world as never been anything like the normal world. If one or two clubs are still willing to spend big, the others will too to keep up

 

To be fair I think most kids will understand why football has been called off. They might not like it but that’s life. Hasn’t all youth football already been cancelled along with a load of the lower leagues?

Also you mention two games but theirs 10 still to play in the prem, presumably more in some lower leagues? I know Liverpool are two games from winning but I doubt there are any other teams in the same position across the league pyramid. And whilst it’s **** for teams that will miss out on trophies and promotions because of this, everyone is losing out across all walks of life, if it has to be cancelled it has to be cancelled.

Plus if the league can’t resume until it’s supposed to be next season then no-one misses out on watching football as it’ll be a new season!

Fair enough if it can resume far sooner than it currently looks possible, but not at the expense of ****ing football going forward. I’d quite like some footy to watch while stuck at home tbh!!

Also I’d hardly call it deluded to say the integrity of this seasons league is ****ed already and resuming several months from now to rush the end to the season for the sake of money won’t save that integrity!

 

And the likes of City and PSG will keep spending regardless.

It might lead to a slight drop or levelling of cost below the very top players but won’t last long before as you say the others try to keep pace.

 

Yes you could be right certainly if behaviour up to now is anything to go by. I guess my view is more on how I think it should go. One thing's for sure, I can't wait to find out.

 

I'm not choosing to ignore your points, I just can't be bothered going over and over how sport exists to compete, not to fold and certainly not to fold at the first opportunity. I have a never give up / push through adversity mentality, if you don't, that's up to you.

 

Only thing I will answer to is
No most kids do not understand - I am living it
They will accept and get over it but they should not have to
It that easy and simple
Sort of the whole point
But you aren’t bothered, right ?

 

I think my views are probably based more on realism and pragmatism than romanticism. Though I understand why people would hold the view you do

 

I’m not that bothered if a bunch of kids have to learn the lesson that life is hard and isn’t always fair, no. There’s more important things going on. And in relation to football I just hold the view that taking a practical approach to the game going forward rather than desperately trying to finish this season is the way forward.

 

I think the FA called the grass roots voiding too early tbh. They should have merely let it pan out and see what happens and when and if the time comes when voiding becomes the only practical outcome, then call it across the entire pyramid. In the grand scheme of things though, it doesn’t matter a shiney ****e.

 

FYI Neil Atkinson just sent this email on the topic:



MIGUEL Delaney writes that 95 per cent of sides are eager for the league season to be completed.

I mean, of course they are. Because this is sensible. Let me offer you some situations which I would want to avoid if I was football:

a) Television asking for money back.
b) Season-ticket holders asking for money back. And I emphatically include corporate season-ticket holders.
c) Corporate partners asking for money back in general.
d) Not being able to claim league-winning, Champions League-qualifying, promotion-achieving bonuses from corporate partners.
d) Having to fail to complete two seasons as 2020/21 is likely to be as hampered as this one.
e) Players asking for end of season bonuses around goals and qualifications when they haven't been confirmed. If I am Jonny Evans and have a 250k payout agreed on finishing top four I would very much like my money as I have done the work.
f) The expunging of all records. If I am Harry Kane I would like my goals to count, please.
g) Loads of people deciding what's the point of the enterprise.

There will be other letters.

Options d) and g) are, in a sense, the most important and are interrelated.

Imagine this all over again but with 12 games on the board by December. And everyone looking at each other wondering what on earth we do now. Options d) and g) would actually make all the other letters intensify. It would be the end of football.

To call to void this season is to gamble offsetting your own club running inadequacies against the possible end of professional football itself, which is some self obsession but a lifetime manufacturing devices to make masturbation easier may well promote the mindset of absolute ****ers.

You can't argue with d) and g) but all the letters which pertain to money will speak loudest in the short term, I suspect. That is fine as they are in our corner but it is no way to live in the long term. We don't need them to live in the long term, to argue that the season should be completed.

Rob Gutmann on the free show made the point that everyone is desperate to balance this conversation, act as though there are two sides.

But the essence of the matter is that there are indeed the people who have earned a position to have a passionate part-biased view by being good at football in their relevant competitions and those who have been poor who are biased who should broadly be told to shut up.

Being **** shouldn't offer a pedestal and being **** shouldn't lead to taking a pathetic moral position which can be torn down by eight-year-olds.

The EFL needs these games to be completed and we need to get money to them somehow. The Premier League also needs these games to be completed for its own future functionality.

If, in all seriousness, there are sides who would risk everything to avoid one season's relegation perhaps football needs to think a bit about what one season's relegation should or shouldn't do to football clubs.

Sense will almost certainly prevail - I'd be amazed if not. As Adam Melia said today, our rivals who are reduced to hoping for this are deluding themselves.

In the meantime, football needs to be able to do its thing behind closed doors and get the other side of what is going to be a tragic situation which will claim many lives and exhaust our health service. It will keep.

We'll all get there with it and it will be a small part of pulling us out of the gloom. Life and health matter most but football does matter. We don't need to apologise that we need the show to go on.

But we do need the show to be sensible, to take its time and to act in the wider interests of the whole game, not just a handful of clubs in dire straits.

 

If it was just a canary in the coal mine, then the canary came back dead and on fire.

 

Sport isn't meant to be "life". It is meant to be fair. If sport is deliberately/intentionally unfair why even bother with it at all?

 

I beg to differ. You're a defeatist

..... and believe me there's nothing romantic about fighting for your life, nothing more real or more pragmatic (and I'm not talking about football).