According to reports, Premier League shareholders will meet Monday to discuss a holiday shutdown, after the clubs have been struggling with multiple coronavirus epidemics.
Due to widespread illnesses among clubs, half of the fixtures this weekend in England’s top flight were cancelled. Brentford boss Thomas Frank is calling for a temporary halt to the hectic winter schedule to allow the teams to recover.
The Times reports that the Premier League chiefs will be meeting Monday to discuss possible shut downs, one day after they had announced their commitment to sticking to current schedule.
According to reports, the meeting indicated that half the top-flight fixtures scheduled for this weekend will go ahead barring any outbreaks in the teams.
These fixtures include Arsenal’s visit to Leeds as well Tottenham’s home match against Liverpool on Sunday. Chelsea will host Wolves, while Manchester City will be traveling to Newcastle.
Reports indicate that the Premier League will be discussing temporarily stopping the season Monday.
Numerous top flight leaders have requested a temporary stop to help with their virus problems
Manchester United’s Saturday match with Brighton was one of five games called off, while the top-flight played four matches in one night on Thursday.
Ralf Rangnick’s United only had seven available players for Sunday’s Seagulls visit. They have therefore closed Carrington Training Base until Tuesday. After that, the club will travel to Newcastle in December 27.
Nine matches were called off because of outbreaks caused by Omicron, ranging from Tottenham’s clash with Brighton in December 12th to five Saturday matches that were called off Thursday.
Following requests by both sides, Thursday’s match between Tottenham and Leicester City has been canceled. Chelsea reported some cases Thursday but their draw with Everton was still held.
Premier League managers had different views on temporarily stopping the season. This was after Brentford manager Frank made public his desire to declare a temporary cease-and-desist.
Thomas Frank, Brentford’s boss, wants the Premier League games this weekend to be postponed
The Danish manager claimed the variant is ‘running like wildfire’ around the world and that shutting down football for at least a week would help clubs get things under control.
Frank said at Thursday’s press conference, “It would give everybody a week or four or five to clean up the training grounds so that everything is cleaned and the chain breaks down.”
“Also, in football you need to have close contact. The physios must be able to treat the players. It’s difficult for us to do our job from home because we’re in the dressing room during matchdays.
Frank feels that stopping this weekend’s high-flying fixtures would be enough for the holiday programme to continue as planned.
Frank said, “We completely respect that we want football to continue, and it’s important we keep going with Boxing Day, and that way we can ensure that Boxing Day continues to go, I’m 100 percent sure of that.”
Brentford has 13 positive case reports from players and club personnel. The next Brentford game will be on February 8.
Jurgen Klopp stated on Thursday that it was wrong to stop the Premier League.
“This Omicron variant runs like wildfire all over the world, and we must do everything we can to prevent it. It would be a great thing to close down the training grounds for three, four, or five days so that we can start again.
Jurgen Klopp, Liverpool’s boss announced that he doesn’t see the point in a ‘circuit breaker stop’ after Thursday’s victory against Newcastle.
Klopp stated in his Thursday press conference that he did not believe it was right to top the league, but given the time constraints we need to be flexible. Covid is the reason we have three outfield players.
“Next, we’ll play the 26th and 28th of December. With 13 players on hand that is impossible. Although there are many things we want to know, I’m not able to answer them all.