Liverpool FC thread

The fact that nearly all fans are disgusted by this shows that owners are out on their own with this.

The above in bold is said by the fans, not the owners. 

Is there? Belgium has had one other scenario.

The PL will do everything in their power to finish the 19/20 season, one way or another.

For if they don't, they're liable to have to pay something like half a billion quid back to SKY, BT and Amazon for failing to fulfil their side of the broadcasting contract.

The Championship has up to 14 teams who can see promotion as a legitimate and realistic goal. The others are in the shake up for relegation. There is no solid argument for crystallising the Championship, let alone actually award anything. Also, if you look down the tables there are other races that are still ongoing.

Three options remain. (a) Close the season with the final points being worked out on a percentage basis. (B) Null and avoid the Season (c) Finish the season.

To me (c) is the most tenable and fairest option, but that is beholden to the diktat of Government and experts. Football is non essential and won’t get a pass. The longer the year passes, the more contracts that will be effected, . Players, management, sponsors, kit supports, advertisers etc. It also creates the problem whereby the transfer window opens again in June, and to try and close it for the summer might not be legal at an EU level. Also, if opened, it provides teams with further opportunity to build their squad in the same season. However, if these matters can be smoothed over, when ready, the season can be finished. But it’s not without major obstacles.

(A) That’s almost the same as freezing the season. (b) This avoids the plethora of issues that arise under (c), but it does create its own issues, namely people benefitting from it by fluke (i.e. relegation candidates.). But the argument by resetting is that it does the least amount of damage, to the largest number of teams, and simply sets a sight on a return in August.

Whatever way it’s done, I feel that self interest and conflicts of interest are guiding this, and that’s any comment is usually made with self interest as the guiding principle. UEFA’s letter would speak to that, in a year where they have already postponed their major international competition.

I think it would be crazy if they played 29 games of a season, 37 in the EFL, and then decided they had to scrap it, or even just finish it as it is, to fit a competition that hasn’t started yet. 

I also assume that if the season is declared null and void, all managers must be reinstated to the jobs they were in at the start of the season?

I've seen this opinion bandied about a fair bit (mainly by Man U fans). There's one huge issue with it that I haven't seen discussed anywhere in football terms- Some experts think there could be a 2nd wave of coronavirus, or that the virus could mutate in the future and be even more devastating, or that the virus could be an annual event, like the 'flu season'. And there isn't an expert in the world can tell us definitively right now that none of those things will happen. 

Say one of those is a possibility, and another wave of the virus is due in say, November. What good is starting a new season if there's absolutely no guarantee that the 'new' season itself can be finished ? What happens if or when that season too has to be abandoned, start another one ? And another one after that ? Will we see our next EPL/La Liga/CL champions in 2027, due to the next 6 years being partially completed ? 

At that point, all competitions would be rendered meaningless, they wouldn't really be competitions at all, where performances or league positions mean absolutely nothing, because any season could be abandoned at any point. There aren't too many TV companies, nor big clubs, would accept that, the TV lads probably being the important ones here seeing as they are the ones funding football. 

Football as a whole is capable of shocking decisions, the 2020 Euro format, the WC in Qatar etc, and it wouldn't surprise me if they abandoned this season, but I don't think they have thought about what happens next and setting precedents in any great detail yet. If they do start to think about those things, I think its likely this season finishes by either playing the remaining games, or a Belgium type freeze of positions, and not an abandonment.