That's the case for every signing though, you sign them because they looked good at their old club and you want that here where they can replicate it or be even better. Lo Celso isn't the first and won't be the last player to come to the Prem from a foreign league and struggle. Also doesn't help that he's made of glass, so he's either been injured or crap in his two and a half years at the club. £42m down the drain and it's doubtful we'd get half of that now if we tried selling.
Playing on Thursday is nuts. If the club can **** UEFA off to join a Super League, they should be telling them that we're not playing this game on H&S grounds and have done with it. I wonder how Rennes feel about the game going ahead?
If I were in their shoes I'd consider forfeiting the match. It's not worth it. Take a 3-0 loss which literally doesn't affect them at all and walk away from the whole mess.
A Rennes forfeit is not on as Vitesse are on the same pts as Spurs. So it will have to be a Spurs forfeit alone, or nothing.
Apparently they also had another staff and player test positive today, after the session, according to Conte. So no guarantees.
Be weird as hell if this and the Brighton game go ahead. Why would either club be willing to risk their players by playing us? A mates dad tested negative for 7 straight days after his wife caught covid, only to test positive on the 8th day. There is no way we can guarantee that all those we play are 100% covid free. The Premier league will cancel imho cos they can not afford to have the Xmas football period decimated but god only know what the ****those creating at UEFA will do.
The UEFA rules are quite clear and though we’ll be missing quite a few players I don’t think we’ll be past the threshold. The PL take it game by game. That said I’d rather just play whatever squad/academy team can be cobbled together Thursday. We have to play the fixture by December 31st anyway so the congestion will be mad and it’s likely a moot point as we have to better Vitesse’s result and overcome a 2GD deficit to go through and they have Mura at home.
I think we're already past both thresholds. We don't appear to have 13 players on the A list available for Rennes and we've got more than 6 cases for Brighton. You've got the GD backwards in the Conference, by the way. We've got +3 and they've got +1.
Other way around....they are 2 goals worse than us. The UEFA rule is ridiculous but it's probably better for us if it goes ahead. They have every incentive to name a weakened side.
I get there are rules but... 1. They were draw up before this new variant and 2. They run a risk of spreading this across different countries Seems completely insane to me. If I were them I'd refuse to play. They are 2nd in their league and catching covid from us could hugely derail their season. BTW we are second in the group with a 2 goal better goal difference than Vietesse. They have to better our win by 3 goals if we were to win.
In other words I got it completely wrong But yeah I imagine Rennes are not too happy either about the game being played. From everything Conte said today, it all just seems like a massive ****ing mess.
I think tomorrow will go ahead but Brighton won’t. Got a ticket for that as well, was due to be my first time at The Amex, though thankfully I was tasked with booking the trains and haven’t done them yet, saved the boys some dough assuming it does indeed get postponed.
Just wanted to add, the opposition for your upcoming games should really help to postpone these games. Current climate I doubt anyone wants to spread or catch this thing. Additionally it's a bit like a player getting injured during warm up and everyone agrees to a change. If these other teams were in the same position they would want to postpone too.