Wrex

I imagine they'll be going all out for the Premier League to be completed so they can make sure of the huge broadcast payments. EFL clubs can make a bit of money from having fans watch games on the ifollow app, but unlike the Premier League most clubs will be getting the bulk of their revenue from fans coming in to watch games. So unless they believe the ifollow revenue would be significant then would it be worth going to the effort and risk involved to finish the season for the EFL? I'd be tempted to say just end it as it is, maybe use point average to balance out games played, and clubs in the automatic promotion places go up and those in relegation places go down. Just cancel the playoffs and say tough luck, clubs only have a 25% chance of promotion if they qualify for the playoffs anyway. Then a reprieve for the highest place relegated club in the division above. Leeds and West Brom go up, they're well clear in the Championship. No relegation from League Two as Bury have already been kicked out, and Barrow go up as National League champions (they're currently four points clear). Luton and Barnsley are 6 and 7 points short of safety in the Championship. Southend and Bolton and 16 and 22 points short of safety in League One (Bury are already kicked out). Do any of them have any huge cause for complaint? The likes of Fulham, Oxford and Exeter would moan that they had a shot of promotion but so what? If you're six points deep in relegation mire with nine games to go or hoping for promotion but stuck in third or fourth with ten games to go then how big of an injustice is it really? Surely that's infinitely more fair than deny teams at the top their deserved promotion and infinitely more practical than extending the season indefinitely to finish off the remaining games?

If you have to play the play-off final at the club's grounds then you have to make it two legged and that's another match you have to squeeze in. If this all goes ahead then they'd just play it at a neutral ground somewhere. I fail to see how it's "selling out" to make use of an £800 million national stadium for more than just an FA Cup final and handful of England matches a year anyway.

UK citizens can leave the house for three reasons,. providing they maintain social distancing: - Food/essential shopping. - one exercise session per day/walking the dog. - Travel to work if a key worker or it cannot be done at home. So the only further restrictions are to say that only key workers can leave the house or that we are no longer allowed our daily exercise and that dogs just stay within 100 yards of home. In that case the people who want to go to a party will just say "yes officer, I was just going to Tesco". The other alternative would be to give police greater powers to punish those they feel are flouting the law and going out for purposes outside of the three permitted reasons given above. I'd be wary of demanding stricter rules for everyone just to punish those determined to break the current rules. Deaths will likely not peak for another week yet. It's worth remembering the lockdown effects take 2-3 weeks to be reflected in the death figures.

I think someone should tell Nathan Smith's agent that summer 2020 is not a good time for a player to be out of contract. I would not like to be a free agent in a month or two considering the massive financial crash that football is currently experiencing. Belts will be tightened all across the board and wages will be going down.

World War II and the covid-19 pandemic aren't really comparable anyway as the whole culture at the time was very different to now. Even up until the 1960s journalists, and the public, were very deferential towards politicians. Now that is far from the case. The public have very low opinion of politicians, and they expect journalists to treat them as untrustworthy.

https://history.blog.gov.uk/2014/09/12/chaos-and-censorship/ A bit of history on the media during World War 2, seen as we seem to be discussing it.

I think you have to look at China and the WHO before, quite rightly, criticising the UK government. https://nypost.com/2020/03/20/who-haunted-by-old-tweet-saying-china-found-no-human-transmission-of-coronavirus/ 14 January, China and WHO were claiming the virus wasn't able to transmit between humans. https://www.who.int/news-room/articles-detail/updated-who-recommendations-for-international-traffic-in-relation-to-covid-19-outbreak 29 February and still up on the WHO website, they're saying no reason to stop flights. So the government is following WHO advice by keeping airports open. Where the government went wrong was by not doing anywhere near enough testing and by not screening people returning from China, Italy, Iran etc. Because of this the virus has gotten a huge infection rate and will take a massive effort to get back under control. Seen as Wuhan had a three month lockdown, let's hope that by June we can get back to something approaching normality (though I still think big gatherings won't be happening and so football matches will be taking place behind closed doors). Also the lockdown didn't happen soon enough, because the screening and testing wasn't happening, and also the doomed and short-lived herd immunity experiment. Even without accurate covid 19 tests there was nothing stopping the government putting very much pre-existing temperature checking technology up and airports and the underground etc. Then they could see anyone with a fever, deny them access (or take them to quarantine at an airport) and tell them to go home and self isolate. Even with a decade of austerity and limited public spending I'm sure they could have done the above and I'm not sure they are even doing it now.

The thing is footballers aren't actually playing at the moment. There is talk in the future of putting in stipulations in player contracts for wage cuts if season's go unfinished

It's about 50/50 if you find yourself on a ventilator because of Covid-19. Let's hope he pulls through now he's resting and getting round the clock care rather than simply staying isolated and carrying on trying to run the country remotely.

Yep. Now they seem to be trying to pressurise the players to take a pay cut and to send those savings over to the EFL as an advance on later payments that are already mandated to the EFL. During this time of crisis Premier League footballers should be giving percentages of their wages to help pay lower league player's wages and to the NHS and charities. The billionaire club owners should not be taking advantage of public resentment over Premier League wages to save themselves money. Premier League owners & clubs & players should be giving money to lower league clubs & lower paid staff & charities. Not Premier League players taking wage cuts so that Premier League owners & clubs can save money, with a small donation to the NHS thrown in, whilst Premier League clubs are also furloughing staff so as to take money back from government. That's robbing Peter to pay Paul, at best.

Yes, and he's leading the line at a club top of the Dutch second tier now

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-linfield-player-tests-positive-39032648.html Former Vale player Ryan McGivern has tested positive for the virus

There has to be sacrifices and compromises all round to keep the football bubble from bursting. When you've got Gordon Taylor in charge of the players union and the likes of Mike Ashley running Premier League clubs then it seems very possible that there will be some kind of financial collapse. That collapse would be due as much to greed as to the impossible to see coming pandemic.

I think it's worth bearing in mind anyone who says Covid-19 is mostly relatively mild for the majority of healthy people need to bear in mind all those times in football where a commentator says "99 times out of 100 he saves/scores that one". Or better yet those statistics that say 95% of referee decisions are the the correct ones.

Right so that makes sense that his youth team contract is up in the summer. Then we'll see if Asksy rates him enough for a first team contract