The Premier League are set to hold ’emergency meetings’ next week amid the seemingly worsening coronavirus crisis, with only five games set to go ahead this weekend.
Spurs suffered a large outbreak of cases that has seen three of their games called off, while Manchester United have seen two postponed after they recorded 19 positives and were forced to close down their Carrington training complex.
Southampton v Brentford, Watford v Crystal Palace, West Ham v Norwich and Everton v Leicester have also been postponed from this weekends fixture list, as the Omicron variant spreads around the UK and has sent case rates soaring, the country as a whole breaking the record for a third successive day with over 93,000 positives confirmed.
Some managers, including Brentford’s Thomas Frank, have suggested a firebreak to the scheduling should be taken to allow football to reset, though Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp said he doesn’t see the ‘benefit’ if it only serves to push the problem further down the road and further congests the fixture list later in the season.
With views across the division varying so widely, the Guardian are reporting that the Premier League will host ’emergency meetings’ next week to discuss the ‘escalating disruption’.
They say that managers will ‘have a chance to discuss their concerns’ during a meeting on Monday, with club owners set to ‘confront the league’ over the ‘effectiveness of emergency measures’ that were re-imposed last week, but have so far been unable to slow the spread.
The report goes on to say that Premier League officials ‘retain confidence in their measures and the preparedness of clubs to implement them’, while a so-called firebreak ‘will not be on their agenda for Monday’s meeting’, although it is almost certain that it will be brought up by some.
