On 13/05/2020 at 16:03, dkw said:

Oh dear, when you get to a point where your asking players to turn their heads away in a tackle then surely common sense says the games just should not be played, thats farcical.  Maybe they should play in full fire fighters masks and the ref can have a towel and some hand sanitiser to make sure everyone is safe after every contact.

It's absurd.

The thing that makes me laugh is that we are told we still need to socially distance ourselves from others, but the Premier League are trying to make a ton of players and staff get together and play some football. If I was to arrange a kick about in my local park, we would all be in trouble, does the Premier League think they are above that rule?

Seen the R number is creeping up as well, a second wave is coming. Football isn’t important, if people are desperate there’s classic football on TV and various apps etc. End the season.

59 minutes ago, Bobbywoodhogan said:

Seen the R number is creeping up as well, a second wave is coming. Football isn’t important, if people are desperate there’s classic football on TV and various apps etc. End the season.

Wait till after this weekend, when everyone starts moving across the countryside and down to the coast, it will be bedlam, that R figure is on the rise, London has definitely improved recently, but come next week when more people go back to work and public transport becomes over run, the virus will spread again here as well, not looking good I'm afraid. Personally I thought easing the Lockdown was far to soon, remember our Lockdown was less tougher than Italy, Spain and France but we have a higher death rate than them, so we obviously should of kept the Lockdown going longer. But don't worry, who needs PPE, more testing, or a vaccine, footballs coming back, Project Restart! the Premier League officials are the saviours of the country, f**k the key workers, these are the real supermen, no need the R rate, there gonna get the moral rate up!

Edited May 15, 20206 yr by chi blue

13 minutes ago, chi blue said:

Wait till after this weekend, when everyone starts moving across the countryside and down to the coast, it will be bedlam, that R figure is on the rise, London has definitely improved recently, but come next week when more people go back to work and public transport becomes over run, the virus will spread again here as well, not looking good I'm afraid. Personally I thought easing the Lockdown was far to soon, remember our Lockdown was less tougher than Italy, Spain and France but we have a higher death rate than them, so we obviously should of kept the Lockdown going longer. But don't worry, who needs PPE, more testing, or a vaccine, footballs coming back, Project Restart! the Premier League officials are the saviours of the country, f**k the key workers, these are the real supermen, no need the R rate, there gonna get the moral rate up!

It was way too soon and Boris F’d up by not making things clearer. 
 

Honestly at this point F the football returning.

4 hours ago, Bobbywoodhogan said:

Seen the R number is creeping up as well, a second wave is coming. 

It happened in Germany after restrictions where lifted then it went back down, when that first happened everyone was like "omg second wave" but it's turned out to be the opposite.

Ofcourse there's going to be some spikes but people really need to differentiate properly between that and second waves.

8 hours ago, Bobbywoodhogan said:

Seen the R number is creeping up as well, a second wave is coming. Football isn’t important, if people are desperate there’s classic football on TV and various apps etc. End the season.

Na in London it’s 0.4 once it reaches a peak people have antibodies, in new York weeks ago , 25% of people tested had antibodies, more people with antibodies less places for the virus to jump, if 60% of people have it then there won’t be any danger of an outbreak or new wave unless a new strain mutants. 
 

Plus it takes up to a couple of weeks to incubate so you wouldn’t see it 2 days after easing restrictions with a 1 day reporting lag, numbers now mean nothing in relation to easing restrictions. 
 

It will go up though it’s natural, as it spreads but then it will come back down hopefully as more people have antibodies as mentioned. 

Edited May 16, 20206 yr by SFL82

5 hours ago, Argo said:

It happened in Germany after restrictions where lifted then it went back down, when that first happened everyone was like "omg second wave" but it's turned out to be the opposite.

Ofcourse there's going to be some spikes but people really need to differentiate properly between that and second waves.

Problem is, we have had nearly 5 times more deaths in a population 20 mill less, whole different ball game I'm afraid. 

42 minutes ago, chi blue said:

Problem is, we have had nearly 5 times more deaths in a population 20 mill less, whole different ball game I'm afraid. 

Some countries opened up nearly a month ago and haven't experienced the bedlam that is supposedly inevitable. Sweden are seeing cases go down without implementing a lock down, heck even Belarus who haven't even implemented any form of restrictions haven't had a massive problem.

People seem to think even unlocking minor restrictions is going to see for all intents and purposes a return to mid March, the evidence from what has happened in other counties post restrictions lifted (one of them being Spain who are higher on death per million than the UK) seems to suggest not, atleast in the short term.

1 hour ago, Argo said:

Some countries opened up nearly a month ago and haven't experienced the bedlam that is supposedly inevitable. Sweden are seeing cases go down without implementing a lock down, heck even Belarus who haven't even implemented any form of restrictions haven't had a massive problem.

People seem to think even unlocking minor restrictions is going to see for all intents and purposes a return to mid March, the evidence from what has happened in other counties post restrictions lifted (one of them being Spain who are higher on death per million than the UK) seems to suggest not, atleast in the short term.

Populations by density, people per square mile....

Sweden 60

Belarus 119

Spain 241

UK 725

2 hours ago, Argo said:

heck even Belarus who haven't even implemented any form of restrictions haven't had a massive problem.

My neighbours are from Belarus and you have to consider there are more people in London than Belarus. People don't live cheek by jowl in Belarus and a lot of the country is extremely rural. But one of the biggest factors is  (and I don't want to sound unfair ) the ones who moved away couldn't visit and the ones who lived there couldn't leave and it's hardly a tourist hot spot so there was no chance or very little of CV being spread.

3 hours ago, Argo said:

Some countries opened up nearly a month ago and haven't experienced the bedlam that is supposedly inevitable. Sweden are seeing cases go down without implementing a lock down, heck even Belarus who haven't even implemented any form of restrictions haven't had a massive problem.

People seem to think even unlocking minor restrictions is going to see for all intents and purposes a return to mid March, the evidence from what has happened in other counties post restrictions lifted (one of them being Spain who are higher on death per million than the UK) seems to suggest not, atleast in the short term.

Our government no matter how they spin it are still very London centric. Lockdown has been lifted despite parts of the country still having very large numbers of new infections and death rates being high. Personally I live just North of Manchester and the past week has labelled us as a hot spot. This virus is still very far from under control like the government would like us to believe, hence why suddenly certain graphs have disappeared on briefings.

1 hour ago, charierre said:

Our government no matter how they spin it are still very London centric. Lockdown has been lifted despite parts of the country still having very large numbers of new infections and death rates being high. Personally I live just North of Manchester and the past week has labelled us as a hot spot. This virus is still very far from under control like the government would like us to believe, hence why suddenly certain graphs have disappeared on briefings.

I do agree with regional issues that's why at the start I was an advocate of having different areas of the country have different rules at different times. I know it has it's logistical challenges but where I'm at didn't even have any cases on the day of the lock down and the nearest case was 50 miles away which was only one, even now we (according to that thing where you put your post code in and see the fatalities near you) have only had two deaths so there's an argument we as an area could have gone down the Swedish route of shield the vulnerable while the young and healthy got on with it while adapting to social distancing.

Could have been a good balance economically if less hit places did that although that said we don't have the hospitals in the area to cope with an outbreak so maybe better safe than sorry and all that.

15 minutes ago, Argo said:

I do agree with regional issues that's why at the start I was an advocate of having different areas of the country have different rules at different times. I know it has it's logistical challenges but where I'm at didn't even have any cases on the day of the lock down and the nearest case was 50 miles away which was only one, even now we (according to that thing where you put your post code in and see the fatalities near you) have only had two deaths so there's an argument we as an area could have gone down the Swedish route of shield the vulnerable while the young and healthy got on with it while adapting to social distancing.

Could have been a good balance economically if less hit places did that although that said we don't have the hospitals in the area to cope with an outbreak so maybe better safe than sorry and all that.

The balance is very hard. Many around here were amazed that lockdown was lifted as we still have around 2500 new cases per day in the area. Hopefully we will be over the peak now but with restrictions having been lifted who knows? The North East have around 4500 new cases per day at present and they are far from being 'out of the woods' 

15 minutes ago, Argo said:

I do agree with regional issues that's why at the start I was an advocate of having different areas of the country have different rules at different times. I know it has it's logistical challenges but where I'm at didn't even have any cases on the day of the lock down and the nearest case was 50 miles away which was only one, even now we (according to that thing where you put your post code in and see the fatalities near you) have only had two deaths so there's an argument we as an area could have gone down the Swedish route of shield the vulnerable while the young and healthy got on with it while adapting to social distancing.

Could have been a good balance economically if less hit places did that although that said we don't have the hospitals in the area to cope with an outbreak so maybe better safe than sorry and all that.

Sweden has 10m people and over 360 deaths per 1m of them, the big majority of cases are in the capital. The UK has more than 500 deaths per 1m people but thats while having 6 times the population of Sweden. Imagine if Sweden also had over 60m people, the numbers would be worse than in the UK. You should say that you could have done as Norway that has only over 40 deaths per 1m population because Norway is now opening their country again slowly, from a total lockdown.

1 hour ago, Argo said:

I do agree with regional issues that's why at the start I was an advocate of having different areas of the country have different rules at different times. I know it has it's logistical challenges but where I'm at didn't even have any cases on the day of the lock down and the nearest case was 50 miles away which was only one, even now we (according to that thing where you put your post code in and see the fatalities near you) have only had two deaths so there's an argument we as an area could have gone down the Swedish route of shield the vulnerable while the young and healthy got on with it while adapting to social distancing.

Could have been a good balance economically if less hit places did that although that said we don't have the hospitals in the area to cope with an outbreak so maybe better safe than sorry and all that.

I suspect that such a nuanced system might have been beyond the capability of the UK government, but I have seen it mentioned as a way to bring the UK out of lockdown more safely. It sounds like a good idea but it would require competent leadership that people actually have faith in. 

This system is probably one of the factors that helped Germany keep the outbreak in check. Each state was able to decide exactly how and when to introduce lockdown measures and also when to reverse them. Actually it goes beyond that, individual lockdown measures can differ from city to city even within the same state. This kind of decentralised decision-making is normal for Germany though, and I find people are generally more socially responsible and more inclined to trust the government, so although it seemed to work here that doesn't necessarily translate to the UK. I could imagine that people in certain regions being in uproar if, for example, the lockdown was eased in London first and then extended in their region for another two weeks, even if that is objectively the sensible thing to do.

Football without fans is bad enough but made even worse with McManaman co commentating.

1 hour ago, charierre said:

Football without fans is bad enough but made even worse with McManaman co commentating.

"Onestly Fletch, I cant think of any other team that deserve this title more than liverpewll" 

I am actually enjoying watching the Bundesliga matches today; lots of goals and fairly decent play by admittedly rusty players.

On 16/05/2020 at 19:45, Phillip said:

I am actually enjoying watching the Bundesliga matches today; lots of goals and fairly decent play by admittedly rusty players.

Glad they are playing as it puts a little pressure on us maybe not this season yet certainly for August or September.

I’ve started doing a video cast with my mates who support Arsenal & Liverpool, our latest is on how they should end the season

Ignore my ugly mug ?

 

Anyone hear Ray Houghton on talksport this afternoon. Basically his take is the FA shouldn't bother making plans for anything like players/staff testing positive after matches, or what to do if the national infection rate rises again as there's no point. Just play football then if it happens sort it out 

I think he was drunk. 

Also, Eva Caneiro has had her say on the virus and athletes:

Quote

“We’re stepping into the unknown here. We know very little about what Covid does to the athletic physiology in general. We know nothing about Covid and the athletic heart. There needs to be an understanding of the risks.” Dr Eva Carneiro interview.

 

On 15/05/2020 at 13:46, Boyne said:

I have just sent the following to my MP. I'll post the response when I receive it. Hopefully I haven't missed out anything.

"As you will be aware there have been a number of announcements and meetings about re-starting the football season. One of the reasons given for re-starting the season is that will improve the morale of the nation. 

Do you know if football fans either individuals or supporters groups have been consulted about whether or not they would like the season to be re-started? Or has it just been the case that the Government has been in discussions with footballing authorities, broadcasters, sponsors and bookmakers? If fans have not been consulted, why not? It would be very unfair if fans have not been consulted. I am a season ticket holder at Chelsea and have been in contact with a number of fellow supporters of the club and the majority are not in favour of the season re-starting. Many feel that it is not a priority and resources e.g. police and medical staff could be taken away from more important roles. There is also the issue of testing players and other football staff when there is still high demand for testing of hospital and other care home staff and also other key-workers.

I await your response."

 

As others have stated, the restart of football has got f**k all to do with morale but is down to money.
 

I have had a response from my MP to my email of above. I should point out that my MP is also a Government minister so he won't be too critical of the Government's stance on saying that the return of football will be good for the morale of the nation. He doesn't answer my key question about whether or not fans have been approached. Reading between the lines I suspect fans haven't been approached. I'll contact the club and the Chelsea Supporters Trust and ask if fans have been consulted. My MP quotes the Government guidelines and the clubs statement on season tickets: stuff that nearly everyone is already aware of. 

"Thank you for your email regarding your concerns about the decision to restart the football season. I appreciate your feedback and thoughts on the return of football. Although there are many people who would like to see the Premier Leagues resumed, there are a number of very practical issues which would need to be addressed as well as considering the extent to which this will draw resources - such as policing - away from frontline activities or create situations where the virus may be able to spread. 

You rightly highlight a number of these important issues and agreement has yet to be struck between each of the Premier League Clubs. On your specific question, I do not know the extent to which individual clubs have sought the views of their supporters, but would encourage you to make contact with Chelsea directly to share your views. It will interesting to see how this weekend's resumption of matches in the German Bundesliga proceeds, although I note that here the Football League 2 season has now been drawn to a conclusion. 

The Covid-19 pandemic has presented huge challenges for the country. Everyone’s actions, including those of elite athletes and sporting bodies, have helped to reduce the transmission of coronavirus in our communities. We must continue to do all that we can to control the spread of the virus and to save lives. In this context it has been agreed by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS), Public Health England (PHE), the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) and UK Sport, working with major sports governing bodies, that a coordinated resumption of elite sporting training and competition will be necessary ahead of any return to competitive sport itself. This is to minimise the risk to the elite sports community, fans, friends and family who support them. This is also to minimise the pressure elite sport places on the wider community and healthcare workers during any resumption of training. Further information and detailed guidance can be found on the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport website via the link below:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-on-phased-return-of-sport-and-recreation/elite-sport-return-to-training-guidance-step-one--2

Please find copied below text from Chelsea Football Club's website page with information about crediting your season ticket for games that will be played without fans present.

"In regard to our fans, we will credit general admission season ticket holders and hospitality season ticket holders for any Premier League home matches which are not played with fans in the stadium, once the final fixtures for the 2019/20 season have been agreed. Crediting will be on a pro-rata basis. We will also reimburse travel and accommodation costs up to £350 per ticket holder to cover non-refundable expenditure by the 3,800 supporters due to travel to Munich last month for the Champions League match. This applies whether travel was booked privately or with the club. Those affected will be contacted shortly." "

All in all, not a particularly helpful response. As I've mentioned before I used to work in a Government Department so was used to hearing crap from Ministers.

 

It will be interesting to see how many people watched the Bundesliga games over the weekend especially those outside Germany. Of course, an exception has to be made for ex-pat Germans. Hopefully not too many outside Germany watched the games as if there were lots of viewers it would encourage the U.K. Government to say that there is a demand for the return of football.  Although, they could of course manipulate statistics. Me being cynical again.

As for the weekend, given a choice between watching football and being outside on a sunny day, the latter wins hands-down.

 

5 minutes ago, Boyne said:

It will be interesting to see how many people watched the Bundesliga games over the weekend especially those outside Germany. Of course, an exception has to be made for ex-pat Germans. Hopefully not too many outside Germany watched the games as if there were lots of viewers it would encourage the U.K. Government to say that there is a demand for the return of football.  Although, they could of course manipulate statistics. Me being cynical again.

As for the weekend, given a choice between watching football and being outside on a sunny day, the latter wins hands-down.

Sorry Boyne. I'm watching the replay of Leipzig and Freiburg as we speak!

I still think we are a ways away from getting the season restarted. Doesn't seem to he a lot of support, particularly from the players

My view still hasn't changed.  Void this season, forget about any thought of playing until every frontline worker is getting regular and immediate testing, the population are subject to test/trace/isolate properly, not in some half-arsed, vaguely promised, weasel-worded way and there is SOME sort of control of the pandemic.

This ridiculous move last week to open up is just a blatant attempt to sneak the disastrous "herd immunity" eugenics solution through under the radar, without ANY indication of a vaccine being available for the next 18 months (at least) and the government messaging, confused and bewildered as it is, is, in a not very subtle way, shifting the blame from government inaction and failures to us, the people needing to "Stay Alert", with our great British common sense and plucky Dunkirk, Blitz spirit.  We all saw how well "common sense" worked out over the weekend on beaches, beauty spots and natural tourist attractions.

What we have to "Stay Alert" to hasn't been stated, but the cowardly and devious spin doctors behind Johnson and his cabinet of inadequate yes-men now have the perfect excuse when the inevitable public enquiry comes along -

"We told them to be alert, they obviously weren't following our instructions or they wouldn't have died"

When such a cynical criminally irresponsible plan is being foisted on us, even contemplating Premier League football matches being played purely so Sky, BT, Bet365 and Paddy Power keep on pulling in the billions is an obscenity.