Where will it end... 12th September as it happens

If what you say is true why did the BBC discuss the three options that were available to the French on how to finish the league?

Lyon are currently looking at an appeal and/or damages claim

 

Lawyers will be getting rich on the back of this, just about every league will be faced with some sort of litigation IMO
It's going to be a right sh!tfest

 

No matter how you do it there will be problems. The challenge, I suppose, is to find the least unfair way. At least if a mechanism is written into a league's regulations, then one would hope the clubs have all had their say in the matter and something acceptable to the majority had been found.

I was wondering about the statistical and record-keeping implications of terminating the season. Well, I would, wouldn't I When a club drops out during a season, e.g. Accrington, the matches/records are expunged and match stats do not enter a player's or club's records. But that doesn't apply here. When WWII stopped the 39/40 season, again everything was expunged. But that is a lot easier to do when the season is only 4 matches in, as opposed to 3/4 finished. The only somewhat relevant precedent I can think of is when a match result -- and thus all records for that match -- is allowed to stand even though the match terminated, for whatever reason, before the regulation 90 minutes + time added on.

Thus I would end the season now, with all stats/records considered official, and handle promotion/relegation positions as they were handled before the playoffs came in. Unfair, I realise, to those sides in playoff positions who won't get the chance at promotion, but I haven't seen any other proposal that would be fair to all.

RCB

 

4:15 in this video

 

Pity that isn’t what they have done then

 

Fairest way to end season
Void the season with league standings as they are now.
Each team have earned points per game over the season so far but this does not guarantee the same ratio will apply over the outstanding games.
Mathematically no team at present have already guaranteed promotion or relegation so should not be promoted or relegated.
The only thing guaranteed so far this season is the points gained. Therefore these points should be added to each team at the beginning of next season, thus giving each team the advantage or disadvantage they have earned from this season.
Then play next season to a conclusion with promotion and relegation as normal.
If the season was allowed to complete in say July/Aug many teams would lose loan players or players out of contract and would make a mockery of the last 9 or so games.

 

This has been the biggest criticism of testing regimes in most countries - that they had no idea that large numbers - often over 50% of those with the virus, and maybe even 90% sometimes - were asymptomatic because they only tested those with symptoms to begin with, allowing the virus to spread far and wide long before it was picked up as people started to fall ill. Just testing mostly symptomatics has given misleading numbers and made a mess of policy responses. If we'd had a regime to test more generally from the start , we would have known earlier a lot of stuff that is just coming to light now, namely that there are lots of symptomless cases and they can be very infectious, sometimes for long periods of time. There's not much point quarantining those with symptoms for only a week or two weeks if symptomless people can be infectious for 3 or 4 weeks, with one symptomless case reckoned to have been contagious for 49 days!

https://en.brinkwire.com/health/first-coronavirus-case-on-us-warship-the-uss-kidd-was-only-discovered-a-month-after-it-left-hawaii/

"There is some evidence people shed the virus for an abnormal amount of time. Previous research shows that viral shedding lasts 20 days on average, with the longest case reported at 37 days.

One medical paper published in March claimed to have discovered a new mutated sub-type of the coronavirus which has a prolonged ability to infect others.

Experts found an unusual case of a middle-aged man with COVID-19 disease who was infectious for 49 days – a record length of time never reported before. "


And in better news:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/30/danes-and-czechs-say-easing-lockdowns-has-produced-no-covid-19-surge

 

(Not sure how I'm getting double posts sometimes when editting.)

 

Agreed with the sentiment.

'Testing in the dark' could prove EXTREMELY useful, but unfortunately while testing capacity is limited, priority continues to have to be given to symptomatic patients and those working on the front line.

I don't think there can be such a thing as a 'wasted' test, though, so any excess tests should be employed randomly so we might get a better idea of where the infection is or has spread to.

 

No matter how the PL and FL try to manoeuvre things, the likelihood is this season will be null and void, with the exception perhaps, of Liverpool being handed the title.
Football isn't bigger than life and death, despite what Shankly said. It's just a game.

Now, football can easily be synchronised over the next two/three years to juggle fixtures, and the seasons will eventually slot back into the normal dates.
However, logistically it's a nightmare, players contracts can't be juggled to fit into rearranged fixtures.

Many players, and club staff will not want to come back to clubs, whilst there's the health risk attached to this virus.
Aguero is tucked up in Argentina with his girlfriend, a safely locked down millionaire, and he won't be going anywhere corvid tests or not, until it's eradicated or there's a vaccine.
Same will go for many league two players, health comes before a footie game

The economy will slowly open, but pubs and football won't be one of them

Every cloud and all that though, just look at east of Pudsey haha

 

I also thought of this, but then thought of the morale of the players at the beginning of the season. If you’re starting the new season, already 12 points behind another team, then motivation for the new season has already been somewhat dented. Not to mention attracting new players to the club. It’s as if the season is already a forgone conclusion before a ball has even been kicked. Look at those clubs who started with a deficit due to financial wrongdoings or embargo’s etc. They very rarely make up the lost ground.

 

Cooke Connolly and Devitt sent back and Mottley Henry released

 

The UK ordered 3.5m blood testing kits off the Chinese last month and then decided it did not want them, and tried to avoid paying, because they only picked up about 70% of cases - yet that is fine for wider population studies as you can adjust your total if you know the sensitivity. Not doing a wider population study is not down to lack of test kits.

Edit - on further checking there has been some criticism that these particular tests might pick up some false positives from other normal coronaviruses. Other countries are using blood tests on tens of thousands each now, though, (lots of results should come soon) so I still do not understand the UK delay. (Apparently, Major League Baseball has completed a bigger blood study (300 tests per club) but has not released prelimary results for some reason as it writes up the paper.)

 

A new blood study in Finland indicates 11 of 516 tested positive for antibodies.

Https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/17615-thl-prevalence-of-coronavirus-antibodies-not-as-high-as-expected-in-uusimaa.html

That would equate to 118k of Finland's 5.52m population being infected. Finland official infection rate is very low at only 4995 which indicates 23.5 times more Finnish have had the virus than swab tests indicate - more now if you allow for the 2 weeks or more it takes for antibodies to develop after initial infection. That would be consistent with a mortality rate of about 0.15 to 0.25% - similar to flu's 0.1-0.3%. This follows a small Colorado study I posted yesterday that suggested maybe 0.2-0.3% mortality.

We now have nearly 20 small blood studies saying 5-50+ times more people have been infected than swab testing has indicated. The extremes say 1/3rd as deadly as flu to 6 times as deadly as flu but most seem to be congregating in the 1 to 2 times as deadly as average flu range - but with a vastly higher number already infected than typical with flu. On 30k UK deaths, that would put UK infections at around 10 million to 20 million (extreme range 3.3m to 60m).

 

https://www.skysports.com/football/news/12040/11981307/glenn-murray-labels-premier-league-face-mask-proposal-farcical

https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11679/11981384/sergio-aguero-manchester-city-striker-says-some-players-are-fearful-of-returning-amid-pandemic

I wonder the extent to which the players have actually been consulted

 

Very confused by that method. Would Liverpool start 25 points ahead of everyone else? Would some teams be on minus?
Just why? End this season. No one is promoted and no one is relegated. Give Liverpool the trophy if that’s what they really want but get it done

 

I agree, but to give Liverpool the title would mean nothing and always be open to ridicule...

 

Points per game, with goal difference.
No relegation or promotion to or from PL
£127.8 mill PL parachute payments which wouldn't be paid should be given to L1 & L2 clubs
L1 £2,928,750
L2 £2,396,250
That should keep them going 'til the new season starts. They would need to be some kind of regulation to ensure the cash was used to keep the clubs going rather than repaying Directors loans etc.

 

I don't think there is a solution that won't lead to ridicule. It's always going to be the weird season.

Ridicule isn't really a concern.