How much will Coronavirus (COVID-19) impact Aston Villa's season?

[john2710]

I think he's answering he own question, even if he's too dumb to know.

[Steve67]

From Reuters via SKY...

"Premier League clubs opposed to the idea of playing their remaining matches at neutral venues once the competition restarts must realise people’s lives are at stake and football concerns should take a back seat, British police have said.

Mark Roberts, the national lead for football policing, told Sky he was concerned about some of the comments he had heard regarding the conditions for restarting the league, which was suspended in mid-March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Brighton & Hove Albion chief executive Paul Barber said his team were opposed to surrendering home advantage and Christian Purslow, his counterpart at Aston Villa, said relegation would be a 200 million pounds catastrophe.

“The things that are starting to concern me a little as we get closer to a potential restart are comments we’re hearing on the margins by people involved in football,” Deputy Chief Constable Roberts said.

“... Comments such as ‘we might get relegated’, ‘we don’t want to play at neutral venues,’ ‘when we played them away there were fans in the stadium’, ‘we play at home without fans that’s a disadvantage’, ‘we want to get the trophy’.

“I get this in a football context that these are all a big deal. But in the context where 30,000 people have died (in the UK) and the total is still going up, then it’s not such a big deal.

“We want to work with football... get the season back going for the commercial reasons, for the morale reasons ... but we have to remind ourselves that cannot be at the risk of putting a single further life in jeopardy,” Roberts said."

Not aimed at you aev.  Boost morale?  How?  With us playing all our games away and not being allowed to cheer them on?  That's the absolute opposite of a boost.  There is a risk to life still, regardless of those comments.  I wonder if he will be saying the same when the police and Liverpool fans clash as Liverpool claim the title for the first time in 30 years and the Liverpool fans take to Bournemouth beach to celebrate.  I'm sure that won't have any negative effect on the resources for the police or the NHS.  Also interesting that he mentioned the trophy item last, like he'd just remembered to throw that in.  The man is a twat, a government driven cockwomble.  Getting football back, under the same conditions that we played previously, would be a boost, if safe to do so and if the integrity of the competition was not compromised. 

[Ad@m]

Wild stab in the dark here, but is he a Liverpool fan by any chance?

[Steve67]

Wild stab in the dark here, but is he a Liverpool fan by any chance?

I thought exactly the same.  Or a Leeds/Albion/Leicester/Man Yoo fan. 

[Meanwood Villa]

Strange comments from the policeman there. If safety was the primary concern this wouldn't be happening.

[aev]

It is all nonsense.

As pauliewalnuts said, undignified hook wriggling.

[The Edge]

 The UK now has the highest death toll in Europe. There's still hundreds dying on a daily basis here. There is no "right" way to restart football until we have this virus under control. Any talk of a restart in whatever barmpot way is shameful and entirely motivated by money.

[PaulWinch again]

Again if it’s not safe to do it don’t fucking do it. The morale thing is absolute bollocks, I reckon most people don’t give a toss about it returning, particularly if it’s the sham that’s being proposed.

[themossman]

So football is important for morale, but we need to accept it doesn’t matter if we get relegated based on a bunch of made up rules and an asymmetrical league?

It either matters or it doesn’t matter you thick twat (and it doesn’t matter).

[Drummond]

Is see the Korean league starts today and streamed on BBC at 11am. That will give an idea of what it would look like I think.

No fans, handshakes, spitting, talking to teammates too closely etc.


My guess right now is that the government want the game to resume to distract half the population (morale), and for people to focus on football rather than the lack of PPE and the huge number of deaths we've had.

[Ad@m]

As good as football might be for morale, loads of people not dying unnecessarily is pretty good for morale too.

[frank black]

Maybe just maybe we can get a couple of victories into the restart before they have to knock it on the head. They’ll have a headache deciding what to do then...

[brian green]

What has been lacking right from the outset of this national catastrophe has been any sense of dignity, from government right through to sport.  It is as though we are not a nation any longer just a travelling circus to be kept on the road.

[curiousorange]

The Athletic reporting Leagues One and Two will be finished this week, with a weighted home/away points per game applied to the remaining fixtures to decide final standings. God knows what the calculation might be but as our home form is better and we have more home games left...

[eamonn]

We'd still go down