The latest blogger to grasp the Project Guest Blog baton is Phil Huish, who has some searching questions to ask of the Premier League before their own pet project can safely begin…
For context, I’m a City season ticket holder who lives in exile. Every match I attend includes six hours in the car and midweek fixtures involve doing all of that driving on the same day. My first season as a season ticket holder was the relegation season to League One.
In the time I’ve been a supporter, like most of us, I’ve never known anything like this and it’s left me with questions I think the Premier League should provide sufficient answers to if they are to restart the league…
1. How can sporting integrity be maintained when the last 92 matches are played under different circumstances than the first 288?
The Premier League has consistently stated that it needs to complete the league in order to maintain ‘sporting integrity of the competition’ but I fail to see how this is possible when the last 92 matches will be played in completely different circumstances than the first 288.
Without the fans that isn’t possible, and I would argue just having a break of ten weeks and starting again like nothing had happened would barely be under the same circumstances. On top of this, there are a number of proposed rule changes that would destroy the argument for sporting integrity. This is just kite-flying to see what gets shot down; politicians do it all the time and it never works for them.
2. What happens when one or more of the 300 people at each match test positive for COVID-19?
When thinking about this, remember that it took Mikel Arteta to test positive before they suspended the league in the first place and only then at the last minute.
As I write this Brighton have had a third player test positive for COVID-19. If this was in the middle of the restarted season, who gets quarantined? The team? the team that they last played? the officials?
That’s all fine but if teams are playing Tuesday / Saturday like in the Championship, you’d have two or three teams and sets of players who could have been exposed to COVID-19 in the preceding two weeks – each of them having played other matches, so you’d have to quarantine the teams they’d played too. It wouldn’t take long for all of the teams to be unable to play.
3. How do the Premier League plan to prevent fans gathering together around matches? When Liverpool win the league, officially, when they are presented with the trophy?
If the VE day celebrations are anything to go by, people will gather together around matches. You can’t stop it. How can it be responsible to put on matches when you know that fans will congregate around the stadium where it is taking place? It would also be irresponsible to ask the police to break up the gatherings as they have better things to do. Assuming everything else goes according to plan, how do you stop half the population of Liverpool from celebrating their first league title in 30 years?
4. What is the plan for next season if fans are not allowed at matches until December? What if it is March or July 2021 or later?
Given the way things are going at the moment, it is hard to see how fans will be allowed back into stadia before autumn at the earliest. Do we end up with a season starting without fans and ending with them? This will be just as unfair as the current proposals. Ignoring the Premier League for a second, football without fans at the matches is not commercially viable. At all.
Even the Premier League could only sustain it for a short time because you only fall in love with football by attending matches. A long-term plan needs to be formed by the footballing authorities on how to get fans back into the game. This, unlike Project Restart, must bring all stakeholders with it. If you alienate the fans you’ll risk undoing all of the work that leagues and clubs have done over the last 30 years.
5. Does the Premier League think that they have done everything that they can to bring the fans of all clubs with them in this?
From my viewpoint, all the talk of Project Restart has come from the Premier League and hasn’t taken all of the clubs, let alone the players and fans, along with it. There has been no fan engagement in this and there has been no open and honest dialogue with the whole footballing community.
I will still love watching Norwich as much as I ever have but I have grown tired of the Premier League mismanagement of this situation. I will put my football fandom on hold while I cannot attend Carrow Road. This is all because of the way that the Premier League has pushed the earliest restart possible without bringing me along.
And it will be too late if Project Restart results directly or indirectly in the death of someone from the football community. The blame for that death will rest solely with Project Restart and the Premier League.
A rather excellent article Phil and you pose 5 interesting questions – none of which have been addressed by the people who claim to run the PL.
For me, the most telling question is your 5th one in that you query why no fan involvement – since WHEN did fans REALLY matter?? Games on Friday evenings/Sunday lunchtimes/Monday evenings with zero thought given to the fact that the away team’s fans may want to travel to see their team play. 🙁
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The EPL are clearly determined to get their Project underway and will do so with 14 votes and government approval. Whilst all of those questions are valid, answers will not be given until absolutely necessary i.e. when the situation arises.
As I have said elsewhere on forums, and an easy riposte to all Liverpool and Leeds fans claiming that we are spoiling it for them – I would dearly love Delia and Stuart Webber to simply say that we are not going to take part; we will take relegation, and stand aside from all the discussions about finishing places and who gets promoted. We don’t really care.
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I’m with you, Stephen. I’ve got to the point of not caring where we end up, or how it’s done. I love football, but I don’t think I could be arsed to watch games played in empty stadiums. The crowd reaction is an important part of any game, even if you’re watching a local league game, but human life is more important.
If Leeds and West Brom (and presumably a.n.other, since if three go down, they’ll have to promote someone else as well from the four currently in the play-off places), then they won’t be there on right. They haven’t earned their place yet. Leeds have blown it often enough to prove that point. The new Premier League will be a sham.
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I’m sure nearly ALL NCFC fans would agree with your 2nd paragraph and especially your last sentence!! 🙂
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Silence is Golden.
(I remember a crowd of us bawling that out on the top of the 14 bus sometime in the late sixties, only to be advised by the conductor, “Well shut up then!)
It’s very noticeable that our club has said absolutely nothing, at least publicly, and I think that’s their best stance.
To do a Karen Brady and say we should simply abandon the season and start again would be blatant self-interest.
To say what you suggest above, which most of us here probably agree with, would doubtless bring the usual backlash elsewhere accusing of the club “lacking ambition”.
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Another great article by the team at MFW Phil
Agree 100% This needs leadership of the highest quality, all the leagues need to get together and plan for the future.
Finish this season on PPG, with or without relegation. Which gives Liverpool the Premiership, once that is done I feel a lot of this Project Restart will fade, especially if players do have to sign Covid waivers.
Then they need to plan for at least the 1st half of next season to be behind closed doors, its absolutely awful, but can anyone really see it being any different.
This will be catastrophic for league 1 & 2 so help will need to come from all bodies, including the Premier League (Who only seem to care about the top 6)
And lets be honest all the above only if its safe to do so. If a high profile player dies with this the blame game will begin.
Football may have to change out of all recognition, some clubs going part-time, regionalised leagues and certainly reduced wages from top to bottom.
The Premiership will have to do a “Norwich” or a “Chelsea” and use the youth systems rather than revel in spending outrageous amounts of money on mediocre players. And we can all name more than a few.
What the big clubs want is not survival for everyone, what they want is the status quo for themselves. Hence their mafia like threat to the rest of the Premier League.
They want to have this huge amount of money to spend in perpetuity.
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There are, as you’ve demonstrated, all sorts of reasons that any kind of restart is going to have lots of problems, whenever it happens. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try though. There will be massive issues in all sorts of industries, especially leisure-based ones so the sooner they are tackled the better.
But point 3, the possibility of fans congregating outside grounds in vast numbers, which is being raised by a lot of people, should not be used as an excuse to avoid playing in empty stadia. Curiously, not one person who I’ve seen make this assumption says that they will themselves be rolling up. It’s just implied that everybody else is an idiot.
Sure, in the past when clubs have been obliged to play behind closed doors fans have arrived in their thousands and congregated outside. But not during a pandemic, and not in circumstances requiring people to break the law just to be there.
Most people, especially older people, have a strong sense of self-preservation, which is why the majority have stuck pretty well to the lockdown restrictions. 20,000 Norwich City season ticket holders are not going to suddenly put their own health at risk by swarming around the stadium for the sake of it.
Of course, there will be some, very likely among the 16-30 year-olds living within easy reach of the ground, who will try it on. There always are. But I think they will be very disappointed.
Imagine turning up expecting the thrill of joining in with a vast mob, and then discovering there are only a couple of hundred of you – which isn’t actually very many spread along Geoffrey Watling Way. What a let down that would be.
That is not to say the authorities – and this is a public order order issue remember – should be complacent. It certainly would do no harm for them to have the deterrent of imposing football-banning orders on anyone who does decide to turn up and refuses to leave when asked.
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Hi Phil
An excellent article
I am no Francophile the complete opposite on fact never got along with them over the channel and there so called effort to stop illegals get to our shores but must give applause to their government by taking the football decision away from the FFA and stopping the leagues.
FIFA could well shout that it isn’t the government’s decision to make or they shouldn’t interfere in footballing matters but they stopped all the in house bickering in one fell swoop, so good for them.
Let’s hope some resemblance of similar ilk happens soon in this country, leaving it to the clubs will on see the smaller clubs in the premiership get bullied in to voting for something they don’t want or unsure of.
Will Gordon Taylor stop backing the hands that pay him a large salary and for once do something for his union members that is the big question
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The elephant in the room is the EPL can probably continue commercially next season because the TV money for most clubs is so large it will cover day to day running costs, especially if costs are pruned in the short term.
But the 3 relegated teams will join the Championship shielded by parachute payments at first but for the vast majority of clubs in the EFL playing behind closed doors is not economically viable so you can easily foresee the 20/21 and maybe the 21/22 season being mothballed.
Norwich would slide down the snake this July with no ladder back to the big time for 2 or 3 years where is the sporting integrity in that? Leeds and anyone getting promoted this year will probably have a couple of seasons dining at the big table with absolutely no risk of relegation.
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Why would there be no ladder back to the big time?
There will be 3 clubs be promoted from the Championship as usual,
Even if the whole season is played behind closed doors there will still be promotion and relegation, otherwise there’s no point in playing at all.
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An excellent article and to many of us I am sure your questions may seem obvious ( along with many other questions that could also be added to the list ), so why are they apparently not being taken into account. Well everybody also probably knows the answer to that as well as it is equally as obvious………MONEY.
And that my friends is the driver for all things pertaining to the behaviour of the human race, so you can argue all the points until the cows come home, there will be no satisfactory conclusion to this football dillema. This pandemic has been likened to a war and you can see the reasons why, decisions will be made by persons ( you should be able to decide who they are ) who’s job it is to seek solutions without accounting for the ultimate human cost eg LIVES ! But that’s ok isn’t it, we can give them all a clap every Thursday night or we can say our thoughts and prayers are with the loss of loved ones and that makes it all right. So don’t expect any football decisions in the near future to be made based on the cost of human lives. Ultimately, money talks and always will and all the bickering and in house fighting about how football should restart, what’s fair and what isn’t, how do we keep safe and retain the integrity of the game etc etc ( the list goes on ) is a smoke screen against. Yes, you’ve guessed it……..the world’s biggest evil……..MONEY !!!
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