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

[Rory]

Is this Korean game on BBC being played behind closed doors, or is it just poorly attended? I can hear crowd noise but can't see anybody, wasn't sure if they were pumping in crowd noise.

[Legion]

Behind closed doors, I think.

[David_Nab]

Sounds like the government are pouring some cold water on expectations of the lockdown being changed much on Sunday. Problem the PL might have is there’s not much road left to kick the can down now.

Well, cold water for everyone else but every time they are asked specifically about football they cant wait to tell us they are working to get it restarted. There is no caution expressed.

They wont be stopping it (at least initially).

It's the same as the PL they want to be seen to be trying to play as the ramifications could be huge if no games go on.Germany .Italy and Spain trying to play on for one reason ,Monday.If the French Gov hadn't agreed to loan the French league money to cover loss of revenue that season would likely be trying to get going.

[Rory]

Behind closed doors, I think.

Well it's certainly helped my morale. I feel great now...

[Mister E]

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."

Compare and contrast with:

Police advice that Premier League clubs must play at neutral venues if they resume the season has “no rationale” and risks demonising supporters by assuming they will gather unsafely outside grounds, a former football policing commander has said.
Owen West, a recently retired West Yorkshire chief superintendent, told the Guardian that football clubs can help give a lead as local community organisations to any gradual easing of Covid-19 lockdown restrictions and do not need to be switched from their home grounds to play games.
“The problem we are all facing is the spread of the coronavirus, yet the potential return of football matches is being discussed as a public order issue, as if supporters are going to gather en masse outside grounds,” said West, a senior consultant with Enable, a group of experts who promote a progressive approach to football policing.
“That tone demonises fans who have been very mature during this crisis, complying with the lockdown and also contributing admirably, to food banks and community aid.”
Enable, whose leadership includes Clifford Stott, a professor of social psychology who sits on the SPI-B sub-committee of the government’s scientific advisory group on emergencies (Sage), has been funded by the EFL for two years to research collaborative policing.
“I do not see the rationale for regional hubs,” West said. “I believe football clubs, in their localities, can play a leadership role in the crisis, hosting matches when they are allowed, and giving guidance to their supporters about the social distancing and other measures required to keep safe.”
The Premier League’s Project Restart plan proposes playing the remaining matches at eight to 10 neutral grounds. That is understood to result partly from police advice to the government that supporters would gather in large numbers outside home grounds and breach physical distancing requirements.
DCC Mark Roberts, head of the UK Football Policing Unit, had said that the Premier League and EFL would be putting an “impracticable” strain on police and other emergency services if they played matches at home.
“Football must appreciate that as the country begins what will inevitably be a long route to normality there will be a significant and unpredictable demand on the police, ambulance and local authorities, all of which are currently stretched, in part through the abstraction of our staff,” Roberts said. “In my own force, our planning team, including football officers, have been redeployed into a logistical team managing elements of our Covid-19 response."
“The requirement of football is that it should look at flexible options that minimise its call on public services and not add to them through unrealistic demands.
“Playing out 450-plus games at 92 stadiums is, in my view, an impracticable burden to put on the police, ambulance and local authorities. In addition to football’s own issues around stadiums, it is unrealistic not to envisage large gatherings of supporters celebrating various on-field achievements.”
West criticised Roberts’s tone as too “punitive”, based on supporters being a public order problem. “The language is of stark warnings being given about fans gathering, which is really disappointing. If the prime minister relaxes freedom to exercise and engage in leisure, it may be that people might attend near their home ground. As long as they do so in a safe way, I don’t see a problem.”
Roberts clarified that he had not received firm proposals from the Premier League, whose clubs are awaiting the government’s update on the lockdown, expected to be eased slightly on Sunday night, before clarifying their plans further at a meeting on Monday. Several clubs, including Brighton and Aston Villa, have publicly stated opposition to neutral venues, arguing that playing at home better preserves sporting integrity and can be as safe as neutral venues. The EFL has said it does want to play matches at home grounds.
Roberts, speaking to ITV, said football people talking about sporting integrity needed to wise up and consider the casualties of Covid-19: “In the broader context, where the country has seen 30,000-and rising deaths, some of the people making these comments need to get a grip because we’ve all got a responsibility – yes to make progress for the benefit of the country, but equally to do it in a way that minimises the risk that anything we do adds to that death toll.”

Sorry for the extended post - if you wish to comment on it, can I suggest you edit it before posting to avoid a mega-thread.

[nevillain]

https://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/efl-premier-league-promotion-relegation-4116483

We would still go down (scroll down it’s there somewhere)

[aev]

I would think if you don't play it and try and relegate teams you would have all sorts of lawsuits filed.

[VinnieChase84]

This is how the PPG home/away thing works.

The whole idea of it is so so flawed. For instance, say you have played the bottom 8 teams at home but not top 6 yet - you’d get the same PPG given to you for the outstanding. How can they use that as a ‘fair’ measure?

We need to play the games and earn the right to stay up. It’s prob our only chance as all these systems will shaft us.
Null and void won’t happen

[aev]

This is how the PPG home/away thing works.

The whole idea of it is so so flawed. For instance, say you have played the bottom 8 teams at home but not top 6 yet - you’d get the same PPG given to you for the outstanding. How can they use that as a ‘fair’ measure?

We need to play the games and earn the right to stay up. It’s prob our only chance as all these systems will shaft us.
Null and void won’t happen

But if you cant play the games before the end of July I am not sure you would have any other options but to void it - the competition can't be completed?

[old man villa fan]

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.

Compare and contrast with:

Police advice that Premier League clubs must play at neutral venues if they resume the season has “no rationale” and risks demonising supporters by assuming they will gather unsafely outside grounds, a former football policing commander has said.

Sorry for the extended post - if you wish to comment on it, can I suggest you edit it before posting to avoid a mega-thread.

Thanks for posting the two articles.  It shows that the media are an influencer in this.  They are selective depending on what point they want to make.  We are never presented with all of the facts.  Whether it is just laziness in repeating parts of stories from other media sources or whether it is to create propaganda to support an unbiased view.

[old man villa fan]

This is how the PPG home/away thing works.

The whole idea of it is so so flawed. For instance, say you have played the bottom 8 teams at home but not top 6 yet - you’d get the same PPG given to you for the outstanding. How can they use that as a ‘fair’ measure?

We need to play the games and earn the right to stay up. It’s prob our only chance as all these systems will shaft us.
Null and void won’t happen

The argument for using points per game to decide relegation from the EPL (may not be the same for other promotion/relegation/European qualification) based on matches that have been completed does not work based on what has gone before over the last 10 years (I have posted on this previously).  Coming up with a weighting factor is manipulation and open to bias or even corruption.  There is not a formula for deciding football matches, otherwise the bookies would not last long.  If something is inconsistently variable, you can not use it as a sound base and you create a scenario for legal objection.  You can map all of the probabilities and come up with a model but I bet you couldn't come up with one to give Watford 3 Liverpool 0.

[Gareth]

A week or so ago I was convinced this was all posturing for posturing sake and eventually the league would be called null & void but it now seems they are 100% committed to getting the tv cash...sorry I meant....raising the morale of a nation!! 

Think neutral venues is a truly ridiculous idea, if we are not in a position to police games to disperse any idiots that turn up to stadiums where games are behind closed doors then we are not ready to restart. 

Likewise medical staffing has to be at the same level as it was beforehand...god forbid we get another Muamba situation and we have a bunch of St Johns taking 6/7 minutes to get on the pitch, that is unthinkable.

If you play out fixtures you have to have as much the same as it was before COVID-19, all teams have to play each other home & away is a fundamental concept of a league, if you play at a neutral venue then pitch dimensions will be different, the watering of pitch/mowing of the grass is not under control of the ‘home’ team not to mention that your opposition had the benefit of a home fan following for the corresponding game.

Wonder if PL will up the parachute payments to those clubs they eventually relegate?  Because let’s face it that is the core issue to the executives however they might bluster about health & safety...

What will be interesting when they do restart will be the motivations of the players, every club will have its different behind the scenes issues, fall outs, resentments about how the club have dealt with COVID-19 etc.  That may well translate into performances so you might see some very odd looking results.

[curiousorange]

Who knows how long games will go on for before they have to stop again? Smith might have one or two games to improve that PPG. All or nothing.

[old man villa fan]

From the Telegraph.  At least one reporter understands the vested interests across football and recognises the potential for corruption by money.

Why should footballers trust the Premier League or the Government when they say safety is a priority?
Jeremy Wilson - Chief Sports Reporter

From almost every corner of English football lurks the distinct smell of a potential vested interest.
The Premier League? Well, we know full well that there are 762 million reasons why most clubs might want to press on with quickly completing the season and a few hundred million reasons why others may beg to differ.
The Professional Footballers’ Association? Well, don’t forget that the trade union which exists to protect the welfare of players actually depends on the Premier League donating it around £25 million each season, with more than £2 million of its income then paid annually to chief executive Gordon Taylor in salary, benefits and bonus.
The club doctors? Well, it did not take long this week to discover just how alarmingly compromised they might be. An apparently routine request for feedback and questions regarding ‘Project Restart’ only elicited four replies. To which one observation, surely, is why were there 16 other club doctors who did not have anything they wanted to say or ask about an idea that, even on the most generous assessment, is littered with possible pitfalls?
That the motives of those who did raise concerns is now apparently being questioned elsewhere in the top-flight underlines how, even inside the game, everyone knows that club doctors can be placed under extreme subconscious or even direct pressure.
And what of the Government? Well, they are clearly keen for some signs of normality. Football would, according to First Secretary Dominic Raab, “lift the spirits of the nation”. That might be true - we do all want hope just now - but we need realism and sound decision-making a whole lot more.
And there will be plenty of players who are acutely aware that it is less than 10 weeks since the Government allowed the Cheltenham Festival to go ahead, permitted Atletico Madrid to play Liverpool at Anfield at a time when the Spanish capital was already in lockdown and had given the green light to a full weekend of football fixtures, only to see that unravel when Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta tested positive for the coronavirus.
These events are obviously very different in terms of the safeguards that have now been proposed, but will still prompt questions about the wisdom of simply accepting official advice, especially when many of the players will have an acute wider global perspective from friends and relatives in countries where governments may take a very different decision.
The players will also have noticed that, while Germany’s Bundesliga is planning for its own restart only four weeks earlier than our own, there is one rather glaring difference. They had 1,115 new cases of coronavirus yesterday and, even with our relatively restricted testing capacity, we had 6,111. There were also another 649 deaths in the UK - double the number Germany has ever recorded in a single day.
Trust must be earned and, if you were a player, how much faith would you realistically have when the Premier League releases statements saying that the “priority” for ‘Project Restart’ “is the health and safety of players, coaches, managers, club staff, supporters and the wider community”?
Having spent much of the past five years working on another medical story - the prevalence of dementia among former players - it is also hard not to be reminded of some of the lessons here. Yes, it is a completely different issue, but the response of the Premier League, the Football League and the Government towards an aspect of player welfare that might challenge the simple urge to ‘keep the show on the road’ feels somehow relevant.
It was in October that the University of Glasgow published research showing that former professional players were five times more likely to die of Alzheimer’s, four times more likely to die of motor neurone disease and 3.5 times more likely to die of dementia that the rest of the population. So how did the Premier League and Football League publicly react?
Short ‘holding’ statements that did little more than acknowledge the existence of what was landmark research. And the Government, on what you might think is an issue of public health? Nothing. AFC Bournemouth did introduce their own unilateral decision to stop heading in the youngest age groups but, when Telegraph Sport asked every club in the Premier League and Championship what changes they might now make, many did not even reply. No other club made changes.
It was left to the Football Association to lead and, in February, they did bring in new guidance which advises that primary age children should not head the ball. But what about professional adults? Anything here? Maybe a limit on heading in training? Maybe a concerted push to change the concussion protocols? Maybe the sort of temporary concussion substitutes that are common in other contact sports? Nope. Just some trials that might take place next season and possibly lead to some sort of change in 2021.
Again, trust is earned and, if you were a player, how much faith against that backdrop would you realistically have when you are told that your “health and safety” is the priority?
None of this is to say that there are not some brilliant and caring people working in football, just that they are not there to make judgments about global pandemics but generally to get players out on the pitch.
And so of course the doctors should be heavily involved in all the discussions and proposals for what happens next, as should the clubs, the Government, the players and the managers. And of course football has a duty to plan for its restart and try to protect all the jobs which are at risk. 
But final decisions about the Premier League’s ‘Project Restart’ should actually rest far away - and with genuinely independent and properly informed medics and epidemiologists.

[andyh]

The government are still reporting over 600 deaths a day.
And football is going to restart, no doubt.

Its fucking disgusting