any well run club in these times will have a nutritionist buying their meals with home delivery from the likes of Hello Fresh.
Should English football be suspended?
- Thread starter Schmeichel's Cartwheel
- Start date
I was quoting both of you in regards to my second paragraph, the first bit was in response to the other poster hinting at bias to Liverpool.
Personally I don't think it's a coincidence Villa were happy to send the youth out for this one but ain't for their next league game (if they were unhappy about it they would have kicked up hell) in a season such as this I'd be amazed if most clubs don't want the Cup off their backlog.
Also I imagine many of the players will want the distraction of carrying on, Ben Chilwell was open about how his mental health suffered during the first shutdown and if I was a betting man I'd say he wasn't the only one.
But then why was The Bundi, La Liga, Liga NOS, Championship, CL, Serie A and FA Cup all finished off? Liverpool weren't in any of those competitions and they're wasn't a set in stone winner at the point any of those returned.
The strangest thing to me was the title race was the only thing not being compromised either way from whatever decision was made (the void was off the table pretty early) yet that was the one thing the majority was focused on.
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My main concern now (outside of the health of the public etc, this is purely football talk) is that the season just isn't going to work anyway, particularly for teams in European competition. I haven't done much actual research into the current 'rules', but there needs to be a new procedure in place I think? At the moment it seems like if you have X amount of players test positive for a League Game, it's postponed. If you have X amount of players positive for a Cup Game, you play it regardless (FA outright admitting that Cup Games are less important and could have probably cancelled the Cups this season to provide more available game weeks for the League).
At the current rate, I feel as if every single team is going to have more than one game rearranged eventually. Because of the Cups and European Tournaments, the 'margin for error' so to speak is incredibly small. I think the first time this happened was with Aston Villa & Newcastle. I said at the time, they might be able to get away with this as it's two teams who are most likely going to finish mid-table, don't have European Tournament commitments and have plenty of room in the list for the game to be rearranged. However, as soon as it starts happening to games involving Tottenham, Manchester City and the like, it becomes instantly more difficult. I honestly don't think there is going to be enough scope to keep this as a sustainable way of running the season.
At some point, teams are going to have to play severely weakened sides or forfeit. However, due to the precedent set already, it would now be unfair to say to, for example, Manchester United, if you return too many positive Covid tests for the game against Liverpool next weekend, you'll have to play the game regardless or forfeit a 2/3-0 loss. Maybe they can say to teams "You get one."? But I think some teams have already had a couple of games postponed. All I keep hearing is "It's a weird season" and we're just having to accept changes willy-nilly, such as the VAR Handball costing some teams points and now not others. I get that the change was voted for and was wanted by the majority, but I have a real issue with changing rules during the season. It shouldn't happen, but it feels like this season is just having to be accepted as 'react to this when it happens and change something'. The planning isn't very good and I fully expect that we are going to end up in a situation where the FA realise "Shit, we can't fit these games anywhere now, what should we do?".
Already in too deep, so we're just going to see radical changes at the drop of a hat and everyone has to accept it. I don't think they'll void this season now or bother with the break, as the most ideal time for a break has almost entirely been and gone (post-New Years Day Fixtures until mid-to-late January was the only ideal time, with Cup Games postponed instead of a lot of League Games).
At the current rate, I feel as if every single team is going to have more than one game rearranged eventually. Because of the Cups and European Tournaments, the 'margin for error' so to speak is incredibly small. I think the first time this happened was with Aston Villa & Newcastle. I said at the time, they might be able to get away with this as it's two teams who are most likely going to finish mid-table, don't have European Tournament commitments and have plenty of room in the list for the game to be rearranged. However, as soon as it starts happening to games involving Tottenham, Manchester City and the like, it becomes instantly more difficult. I honestly don't think there is going to be enough scope to keep this as a sustainable way of running the season.
At some point, teams are going to have to play severely weakened sides or forfeit. However, due to the precedent set already, it would now be unfair to say to, for example, Manchester United, if you return too many positive Covid tests for the game against Liverpool next weekend, you'll have to play the game regardless or forfeit a 2/3-0 loss. Maybe they can say to teams "You get one."? But I think some teams have already had a couple of games postponed. All I keep hearing is "It's a weird season" and we're just having to accept changes willy-nilly, such as the VAR Handball costing some teams points and now not others. I get that the change was voted for and was wanted by the majority, but I have a real issue with changing rules during the season. It shouldn't happen, but it feels like this season is just having to be accepted as 'react to this when it happens and change something'. The planning isn't very good and I fully expect that we are going to end up in a situation where the FA realise "Shit, we can't fit these games anywhere now, what should we do?".
Already in too deep, so we're just going to see radical changes at the drop of a hat and everyone has to accept it. I don't think they'll void this season now or bother with the break, as the most ideal time for a break has almost entirely been and gone (post-New Years Day Fixtures until mid-to-late January was the only ideal time, with Cup Games postponed instead of a lot of League Games).
I don't know why, but yesterday Villa had to play a load of young lads and only a couple of weeks ago a game was cancelled at short notice with less cases. That's the sort of head scratching decision making you'd expect from Sunday league boards.
I was watching a virologist on the box a couple of nights ago, his take was that we are now probably seeing the seasonality of this, which was not seen last year as it wasn't known to be over this far, the same as flu, which is nearly always worse at this time of year.
They should probably take a break for a month at least, seeing as the rest of society is taking a hit. The players unions and coaches should put forward these motions if they really cared about player welfare.But TV money is the decision maker.
I was watching a virologist on the box a couple of nights ago, his take was that we are now probably seeing the seasonality of this, which was not seen last year as it wasn't known to be over this far, the same as flu, which is nearly always worse at this time of year.
They should probably take a break for a month at least, seeing as the rest of society is taking a hit. The players unions and coaches should put forward these motions if they really cared about player welfare.But TV money is the decision maker.
Why would the chances be that high? Sure, specifically one individual person called Doris from Dorset is unlikely to catch it as a result.
In general terms, if it's getting into player bubbles (and I don't know their arrangements, haven't been following it that closely), why wouldn't it get out of them too and see them or coaches pass it on? I don't see how it can be a one-way system as such.
You mentioned death rates. Not infection rates. Besides, consider the infection-fatality rate which is also remarkably low to the point of being immaterial for the vast majority of healthy people. You're the one that needs to wake up -not me.
Well yeah but they're also saying 16m people by mid Feb or something which is clearly not going to happen. Still, I don't know how many people you need to vaccinate in order to start bringing that R rate down, plus the conditions for spread of the virus are less favourable so it wouldn't shock me if everything is normal ish in the summer.
I feel like the UK government still has some major feck ups left in them before all this is over though.
Remarkably low compared to what, being shot in the face?
Rather than force a slow and painful death upon us by removing our only luxury these days, why not vaccinate all the players so they can continue playing indefinitely?
You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
Wow.
Britain had 1300+ deaths yesterday, equalling the record set in March last year, many of which were of an age considered "safe" before this new strain materialized.
I'll let you be the judge. Here are the infection-fatality rate stats by age:
0-19 years 0.003%
20-49 years 0.02%
50-59 years 0.5%
70+ years 5.4%
https://data.spectator.co.uk/
What else can you do? Its over and we have to move on. It was a democratic decision to come out.
As you said why bring Brexit into this discussion?
Americans said slavery is illegal, get over it.
Just saying.
They were right to do so of course. But yeah, governments or people do say things are done/settled all the time.
Just saying.
They were right to do so of course. But yeah, governments or people do say things are done/settled all the time.
I said get the clubs to pay for the vaccine instead of getting tested by NHS all the while. That way it will save NHS the money.
Deaths due to what? Are we talking deaths 'with covid' or 'of covid'? There's a world of difference.
The government declares any death within 28 days of a positive test a covid death - this is distorting the severity of the matter to say the least.
And then there's the issue of PCR testing which is a highly flawed method notorious for false positives.
Why has no rigourous cost-benefit analysis of lockdown been undertaken? The lockdown is the bigger killer.
Well the man on the radio didnt make that clear. The fact he mentioned save the NHS money, makes me think the NHS are funding it.
Fixed
The lockdown is essential for numerous reasons, the most important of which is to prevent the virus from spiralling completely out of control. Who knows how many deaths we'd be looking at without it in place, especially with this new, considerably more effective strain and the rapidity with which it spreads.
Yep. This is so obvious and somehow it's January 2021 and its still needing to be explained. Madness really.
Because even if we take out the measures people are in general avoiding contact with elderly and vulnerable people so I highly doubt footballers are rushing round their nans house. Any ageing coaches are choosing themselves to take the risk, they (and the players) have the right to go on the furlough scheme like a normal citizen (isn't that we want, these footballers/managers treated like every one else?) if they are too worried to work while any canteen staff or what not will be kept well away from the players.
Has there been any death or even severe illness that has been traced back to football? I've heard nothing about such and I'm sure the media and people who don't like football would have been all over it had it happened even once.
What I'm really not looking forward to in the next month or so is players/manager's happening to side with a solution that best suits their club and trying to disingenuously pass it off as anything but what's best for their club (we saw it all the way through the last lockdown and have already started seeing it now with OGS and Big Sam's contrasting views).
How many deaths has Lockdowns caused and will continue to be caused by lockdowns?
Lockdown brings about death through cancelled hospital treatments for terminal illnesses, missed diagnosis, increased suicides, increased poverty brought about by economic devastation wrought by successive failed lockdowns, increases in mental health conditions, domestic violence, families torn apart, children denied education and opportunity. The list goes on.
That's before we even consider the cost to human rights, civil liberties and democratic processes.
Did the previous lockdowns prevent the 'virus from spiralling out of control'? No. But here we are trying the same thing again. The very definition of insanity.
I'm just going to assume you're on a windup at this point.
There is no way you could be this ignorant.
Those are US stats. The UK version is closer to 0.1% for people under 40. And then the risk approximately doubles for every eight years of age resulting in >5% for people over 80. Do you honestly think that, for example, 0.5% death rate is "remarkably low" though? It's pretty fecking high for one cause of death.
As a comparison, heart disease is one of the biggest killers in the UK every year and it equates to approximately 450 deaths a day. Well you can see that Covid death tolls are in the thousands if you let it spread unchecked.
And that's even completely ignoring all the people with long Covid symptoms. Chronic illness like that are a drain on the economy, the health service and can't be fun to live through.
How is wanting a thorough cost-benefit analysis of the lockdown ignorance or a wind-up?
Please explain which parts of my post constitute ignorance or are invalid.
What's your lockdown alternative?
Objectively they did exactly that. Look at the infection rates / case rates before and after lockdowns.
We shouldn't have had all these lockdowns because we should have been targeting zero Covid like other islands such as Singapore and New Zealand did from much earlier in the pandemic (February). The government have been taking the piss with not testing at the borders, wasting money on a completely ineffective test & trace program etc. But once you make all these mistakes, lockdown is the only way to unfeck everything.
It's sufficiently low to make the lockdowns (a cure worse than the disease) completely unjustifiable.
Again, the death toll for Covid is skewed by the way in which covid deaths are categorised.
Indeed, a chronic illness is a drain on the economy but so is shutting down entire sectors and putting the population under defacto house arrest causing and exacerbating myriad other public health issues.
Focussed protection is one alternative.
You may have a point about the government's incompetence from the start.
Lockdown is not the way to 'unfeck everything'. It is and will cause more problems than it solves and eventually we're back to square one.
The government should be supporting people and businesses that they're stopping from living their lives and doing their work, you won't find any argument from me on that. They've made a massive feck up of everything from the beginning (except the vaccine in fairness although they are now doing their best to feck with that as well).
But trying to claim that the cure is worse than the disease is just wrong. The economy will not go well with Covid spreading round, it just doesn't. All the evidence backs that up. Getting rid of Covid is the only way to stop this suffering. We've not been serious in actually trying to do this until now in this country, that's the problem.
No we're not back to square one, the lockdown gives you time to vaccinate people, that's all.
Support comes at astronomical cost to taxpayers. The ramifications of the financial costs of lockdowns are out of control. Think austerity was bad? Spending to support, enforce and implement lockdowns will have an impact on lives for generations.
The government failed from day one. They failed in implementing a test and trace system. They failed at every juncture. The likelihood of them failing in vaccinating the populous is extremely high. And that's before we even get to discuss the safety and efficacy of the vaccines.
Irrefutable Imperial evidence that the cure of lockdown is not worse than the disease is scant to say the least.
Getting rid of covid won't bring back the people whose lives could have been saved has the lockdown not prevented their medical treatment for terminal illnesses. Swathes of the economy may never recover and no country ever improves the health of it's populous from a position of economic disadvantage.
There are alternatives to lockdowns even now and I would implore everyone to question the narratives of the government and mainstream media.
The big worry was that these vaccines don't deal with the new variants of the virus. But that seems not to be an issue thankfully.
But future questions of how long does this vaccine last. Do you need yearly top ups etc do remain.
Far too much gammon round these parts these days. Absolute mentalists.
But something has to be done with football, albeit probably not a full Covid break. We can’t keep postponing individual matches / having half a squad available.
Clubs need to be stricter in enforcing this bubble.
But something has to be done with football, albeit probably not a full Covid break. We can’t keep postponing individual matches / having half a squad available.
Clubs need to be stricter in enforcing this bubble.
Ah, I thought we were quoting Sean Dyche. I heard talksport talking about him on the radio yesterday, saying something about giving the players the vaccine so that money saved from all the testing could be given to the NHS. Just sounded like another shitty idea to get the public onboard with it and of course using the NHS is the best way to get the public on side.
I like this.
Ok let me put it this way. In terms of deaths, the typical average daily rate of deaths from all causes in the UK is about 1400. Yesterday we registered I think it was 1370 deaths just from Covid. That number is still increasing as the effects of the lockdown won't have yet taken hold. If we didn't lock down it would keep increasing.
And if we want to talk about the economy, the German economy for example (where they also have significant restrictions on their daily lives) has suffered an awful lot less than our economy. This is because they've had a strategy from the start and have tried to minimise how many lockdowns they have by testing & tracing effectively, locking down early to prevent having to do it for an extended period, and they've also got more and better equipped hospitals than we do as well (with the right PPE from the start). If you think about how many open land borders Germany has and how large their immigrant population is compared to most countries in Europe, you would expect their situation to be worse than ours.
Countries that have managed Covid well have consistently done better economically this year across the world.
Who's gammon and why are they mental?