It’s still amazing to believe that just a few days ago Anfield was full and thousands of Spanish fans came from Madrid which is currently fighting against the infection and mingled freely in the city, on public transport, in the bars, and in the stadium, before going back to hotels and airports for flights home. At the same time the premier league was still planning on hosting this weeks fixtures as the Arsenal squad had knowingly been in contact with a confirmed positive case. WTF where they all thinking? That they could just carry all this on and see if they could finish it before too many people died? The more this goes on the more absolutely abhorrent the decision making is. We’ve been given future projections from China and Italy showing exactly how this will manifest itself and the PL and UEFA still decided to carry on. Until Arteta tested positive and then all of a sudden it was ‘we’ll suspend the games’, like did they not think that anyone in football would get it? It’s just completely knee jerk reactionary nonsense and shows either (hopefully) a completely incompetent executive body that froze under pressure, or (more sinister) a greedy exec body who prioritised money and their favoured vested interests over the health of fans. Heads should roll at the PL for this because this is beyond the pale even for them. A simple question should have been asked as soon as this started in China and was identified as a threat to most nations - ‘if this impacts the UK, can football continue or not?’ If the answer is yes then we should be playing now, if the answer was no, then we should have cancelled the moment the first case occurred in the UK. The horrible truth is though that they thought they would just carry on, bank the money, and try and ‘get away with it’. Shameful.
Yes absolutely spot on. I think that statement, put out on Thursday evening, less than 48 before most fixtures were due will go down to haunt them. We knew at that stage that Leicester has players in quarantine, Wolves had played at Olympiakos, and Arsenal had players in quarantine too. That was knowledge they have available to them. It was also public knowledge Mendy had it, and he had played against Manchester United.
They may well have known that ourselves, Bournemouth, Chelsea, Watford, West Ham etc were all quarantining players. I can't be certain, but there's every chance they knew. And they made that call.
It took them a further 12 hours after that Arteta news to make the decision. Why the wait? Why not immediately announce the decision?
I have said before, I don't think the PL's reputation comes out of this unscathed. I think they are badly tarnished. The only comparison I can think of is the Hillsborough disaster, and you have seen how institutions are now viewed on Merseyside as a result. I think there will be a similar level of anger and distrust from the football community after this.
When they announced their review (less than an hour after the initial announcement to say all things go ahead) they were being absolutely pilloried in the comments sections. Real genuine anger at the disgraceful behaviour.
It's for this reason I do not think they will try to put the games back on lightly, or try and stunt like games behind closed doors. I think that moment has gone.
A lot of Liverpool fans seem to think it's inevitable that they will be awarded the title, and there seems to be no understanding, you can't really award a title if you're not prepared to award relegation or promotion on that basis. The league will not want to do this. The end logical point, and the easiest legally is just to cancel and make no moral calls. Don't be surprised if it also involved just repeating the previous seasons teams in Europe. It's harsh on teams, but enough will go along with it.