Today's News: Potential Impact On Forthcoming City Matches

It isn’t the wrong decision. Just in the PL and EFl there are 46 games every weekend. The PL gets over 320k attending each weekend and the EFL combined adds about 200k. That requires a significant amount of police resources not just at the stadium but also across the travel routes and in the best of times the Police usually change fixtures when two teams in the same city or town are playing as it would stretch them thin. Plus also they have delayed Rangers Champions League match (and banned away fans) for policing reasons as police from around the country are being diverted

Now sure going as far as grass roots is a bit extreme but they didn’t have much time to decide and deciding where the cut off is would have been problematic.

 

The thing is first of all football doesn’t just impact policing local to the stadium. People who attend matches no longer just come from 5 minutes down the road, they travel from all around the country and that puts pressure not just locally and that’s without even taking away fans into account. And all police forces will know they will need to supply officers but how many when the decision was made would be up in the air, even now they may not know that for certain.

 

One of the biggest things that ‘ties up police’ is disorder offences on a Friday and Saturday night. Often drink fuelled! Are you suggesting that Pubs/Clubs/Restaurants/Off Licences and Supermarkets should be shut, to stop alcohol being sold, so that they don’t require significant Police resources?

 

Even if the police weren’t potentially understaffed something as big as this would put pressure on them. Just look at how many police have been needed for the short journey between Balmoral and Edinburgh. I just don’t think people realise how many resources that not only this is taking but also the resources to put on the whole football pyramid really are.

 

It might result in the most arrests but policing normal disorder is a reactive measure. Policing events is a proactive one as with mass attended events the police need to be there as if something happens any delay is problematic. I suspect there are way more cops assigned to football matches than to pubs and clubs even if in general matches produce way fewer arrests.

With Rangers moving their game due to the police I can’t see the EFL putting any matches on midweek. The expected attendance across all the Champions League, Europa League and Conference league matches in the U.K. across Tue, Wed and Thur is less than just the number expected in Championship, League 1 and League 2 matches on Tuesday only. Moving a match of 50k back a day makes only a small difference after all, especially as its less intensive to put on say a home match for you with 18k attending that’s 4 matches with a combined attendance of 18k so moving Rangers match makes less impact. They MIGHT allow Tuesdays Championship games to happen but League 1 and 2 I suspect get cancelled by noon tomorrow, especially as L1 and L2 will largely be taking place during the World a cup unless a team has a certain number of players on international duty

They might have not known how many would be needed but that doesn’t mean they don’t know they would need to supply some. And they couldn’t wait until an hour before the game to decided as at that point all the people have traveled and any issues with too few cops are already a problem at that point. It had to be soon enough to prevent travel