Footballers and CoronaVirus

[Snake Plissken]

Ah well, it shouldn't come a surprise to certain managers then and perhaps they could plan accordingly.

(I'm enjoying a good rant - don't bring facts into it!)

[ad hoc]

I don't remember there usually being a game between Boxing Day and New Year until the last couple of years, apart from those shuffled from the 26th to the 27th or 1st to 31st (or 2nd) for TV.

My point was rather that they could put the Amazon games at any time in the season, but no, they have to stick them in the month with the highest concentration already.

No, I think there has always been a game in that week. There are usually 4 games in the period between about Dec 22nd and the FA Cup third round

[Snake Plissken]

I don't remember there usually being a game between Boxing Day and New Year until the last couple of years, apart from those shuffled from the 26th to the 27th or 1st to 31st (or 2nd) for TV.

My point was rather that they could put the Amazon games at any time in the season, but no, they have to stick them in the month with the highest concentration already.

[Ray de Galles]

A minor point, are the games on Amazon this midweek actually extra games? I thought they formed part of the usual number of Xmas/NY fixtures.

The EFL appear to be playing the same amount of games at this time as the PL without Amazon being the reason.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Have to say I'm definitely on the side of increasing to five subs. Just because it means the bigger clubs to bring on five international standard subs isn't a good reason to oppose it

Good point, thanks.

[Snake Plissken]

My issue is that "player welfare" is being used in exactly the same terms that a company imposing a new zero hours contract on their workers is "increasing job flexibility". It's got absolutely nothing to do with protecting the health of the players.

Klopps argument (and I'm picking him out purely because he had a shot at my lot) is that his players cannot possibly be asked to keep up the intensity demanded of their tactical game plan. To which I respond "WELL DON'T FUCKING TELL THEM TO, THEN". The game of football has been 90 minutes long for a century, if a manager is flogging his players so hard that they can't last that length of time without getting injured, then it isn't the game that has to change.

It's like the manager of Usain Bolt demanding that the 200m be reduced by 50m because his client can't possibly be asked to sprint for the full distance as quickly as he does for the 100m.

The current situation with Covid complicates things, but the Xmas schedule is a known pileup and in ordinary times, teams have squads of 25 players to cope with injuries. (And why was that 25 player limit brought in, ah yes, to cope with the intensity of the modern football schedule.) But that schedule is a result of the clubs, the league and the broadcasters and they didn't give a flying toss about two more games in December when Amazon came waving a big cheque. Similar when it is the one-off FA Cup and League Cup games causing fixture pileups and not the 6-16 games plus international travel of the Champions League.

And in the coming five subs days - as I know the big clubs will get their way because they always do - the number of soft tissue injuries isn't going to drop, because the managers are going to demand that their players flog themselves to death for 60 minutes before replacement, in the same way that rugby adapted to increased substitutions by having more blokes built like brick shithouses smashing into each other for shorter times and completely incapable of lasting a full match. Screw it, go the whole hog - unlimited substitutions in a game, on the fly. You could sell 82 televised games a season out of the players then.

[Sean of the Shed]

Have to say I'm definitely on the side of increasing to five subs. Just because it means the bigger clubs to bring on five international standard subs isn't a good reason to oppose it when the main consideration has to be the welfare of the players.
It doesn't matter what you pay people and how many backroom training staff there are, at some point exhaustion will be inevitable and as Janik said above this will lead to injury.
Likewise I am sure about the 13 available players rule. If this is your situation for a single game then maybe, but going on a run of three or more with that number available is totally unfair, the minimum number should be 16 so those five subs are available. In this situation it should never be an issue for big clubs with large squads.

[Janik]

Like Snake, I don't see how having 5 subs will solve the problem of not having enough players to play a game.

You can’t see that because it is not about that. It’s about player welfare, the increased risk of injuries from people playing tired. Which matters to a club with a small squad and a more fixed first XI who are going to be asked to play twice a week for weeks on end.

[Satchmo Distel]

Man Friday
Tuesday Wealdstone

[caja-dglh]

Everton v Newcastle Thursday is off. Convenient for Newcastle.

So we have Sheffield Wednesday & Newcastle Thursday. Someone needs to buy another five clubs and give them days-of-the-week names.

[Satchmo Distel]

Everton v Newcastle Thursday is off. Convenient for Newcastle.

[Patrick Thistle]

Like Snake, I don't see how having 5 subs will solve the problem of not having enough players to play a game. I can see how over a course of a season it can be used to protect players from exacerbating injuries. But it seems a bit late now to bring it in to prevent cancellations due to covid.

[Fearful Symmetry]

And now because our game at Bramall Lane is now off, we now have Blades fans on Twitter accusing us of all kinds of skulduggery, while Blackburn fans are still being pissy. In the words of the kids, I can't even.

[Gas In Name Only]

Crawley-Rovers is off, our third postponement in a row. Heading towards our longest unbeaten spell under Barton now and will get there if Orient is called off at New Year.

Hopefully Joey's got it himself and has had an awful Christmas

Despite my scepticism re: AFCW's statement, I've just seen it pointed out that the Crawley game is 12 days after our Scunthorpe postponement. Given an isolation period of 7-10 days, one starts to wonder just how many more positives we could possibly have had and how advantageous it is to have these postponements during a season long injury crisis and a transfer window on the horizon.

[DCI Harry Batt]

The number of available subs has got fuck all to do with the current situation.

I'm not a fan of endless subs nor of big clubs hoovering up talent, but I don't think they are explanations for why my club thinks it's an issue here.

[Snake Plissken]

It’s either that or someone has figured out that shelling out £100m in transfer fees and wages for 10 people to sit on a bench (if they are lucky) is a bad use of money and therefore the solution is to change the rules to avoid admitting it.

[Snake Plissken]

Exactly. It’s amazing how players are stronger, fitter and faster than ever thanks to an army of back room staff, all of whom seem completely unaware that a game of football lasts 90 minutes.

[Satchmo Distel]

The issue will be brought up every Xmas, irrespective of pandemics. TV companies want big clubs to play games 48 hours apart. That has sometimes been a leveler in the past (more upsets than in other weeks) so the big clubs want to use the bench to stop that leveling (i.e. restore their unfair advantages).

[Snake Plissken]

The number of available subs has got fuck all to do with the current situation.

[Gas In Name Only]

Crawley-Rovers is off, our third postponement in a row. Heading towards our longest unbeaten spell under Barton now and will get there if Orient is called off at New Year.

Hopefully Joey's got it himself and has had an awful Christmas

[Fearful Symmetry]

Even though Hull City complied with the EFL rules on this, and also told them on Friday that they had 14 cases, and despite it being known that the EFL wanted us to play the kids in order to get a game on Sky, it would appear that a fair wedge of Blackburn fans want our club fined/sanctioned/to have points deducted etc. What a fucking shambles.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

You can see why Tuchel wants five substitutions.

He brought on Jorginho, Pulisic, Mount, James and Kanté to win the League Cup tie at Brentford.

Yes but only because they started three players eligible for the fa youth Cup, and picked s bunch of fringe players. You couldn't make this argument if he had gone the other way and started the first team players and brought on the fringe ones

See here's the thing. Literally every other country on earth has decided that 5 substitutes is a perfectly reasonable response to some of the player welfare issues brought about by the covid epidemic Even in countries that have teams that struggle to field a squad of 16 players. In circumstances like this, the onus is on those who are opposed to having five substitutes to justfiy why they are opposed to it, Because this just looks like English exceptionalism. And I'm trying to think of any other form of national exceptionalism that isn't just nonsense.

When AFC Wimbledon are asking for the return of five subs, particularly in the context of a statement about how focussed they are on player welfare in the midst of a pandemic, it should be abundantly clear that thoughtful people, focussed on protecting their players, and trying to manage their playing resources as well as possible under the circumstances think this is both a good and necessary idea, I find myself struggling to comprehend what any counter argument might be.

I don't understand this culture of total disregard for issues of player protection in England, and surrounding english football. You can see it here in the responses to this tweet. Which can be summed up as tribal bantz, and the exhaustion version of "How can you be depressed on £20k a week" These people on a basic level hate the players they are supposed to support.

https://twitter.com/GNev2/status/1474099451602124803

[DCI Harry Batt]

Yeah, we'll see.

[Gas In Name Only]

Or even that period in early 2020 when curtain twitchers spent all their time reporting on the activities of their neighbours and whether they really needed to be out and about

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

I expect that statement will come back to haunt them at some point. It feels like that period in late 2020 when everyone was obsessed with local authority case rates and how it affected them moving between tiers of restrictions, and the notion that some were intrinsically superior to others.