Rage Online

Hummmm… lots of cancelled fixtures by teams underperforming who *will* strengthen in Jan. Yes, Charlton I’m lookin looking at you. The new ‘time wasting’ is pushing your fixtures into an entirely new year and entirely new transfer window.

I recall disbelief last season when our friends from down the A420 called off a game when perhaps three people had covid, when that included non playing staff. Here we are the best part of 2 years later and the football authorities have still failed to develop clear guidelines around postponement. With the EPL we can legitimately claim who pays the piper is calling the tune. Down where we are it comes across as simple incompetence.

They could have tried to implement guidelines 18 months ago. Even if they had initially got it wrong whatever system they had introduced could have been adapted several times over by now.

Quite a lot of cynicism on display here. I mean, there are clearly defined guidelines about player availability now, aren't there? The fact that we don't hear the exact details of which clubs have which players unavailable probably has more to do with confidentiality of health records than attempts to obfuscate and gain an advantage. We never knew which Oxford players actually had Covid when we called our game at Wigan off, did we? Also, clubs will have lost quite a lot of revenue from not playing fixtures over the festive period, so I doubt they took the decisions lightly. Especially at a time when it wasn't clear whether rearranged matches would have crowds in at all.

Clubs also have a duty of care to players, something I'm realising more having come down with Covid myself last week. Despite being fully jabbed, it is not pleasant and can take a fair bit of getting over. And case rates are higher now than they've ever been. It's easy to think of Covid as just numbers and daily statistics (or excuses for not playing football matches), but that is to forget the toll this illness has taken on millions of lives in this country alone over the last two years.

KY, firstly: get well soon. I too was hit with it last week of Nov (over my b’day) and it was not nice.

I think it is less down to players out with Covid (all of your points here are correct) and you can measure, via testing, those who are unwell due to C-19. What is harder to measure is clubs calling off games not because of c-19 cases but because of c-19 cases AND injuries. That second bit is much harder for clubs to prove.

I’ve no beef with teams calling games off due to Covid, and the player welfare around it, but when it is a mix of that and injuries then I do start to wonder… esp when Charlton, as an AFC supporting friend of mine (a club who lost a huge amount of rev due to their xmas home games vs Charlton and Pompy being called off) reminds me, Charlton have 68 players under contract.

recordmeister wrote: ↑Wed Dec 29, 2021 2:01 pm I’ve no beef with teams calling games off due to Covid, and the player welfare around it, but when it is a mix of that and injuries then I do start to wonder… esp when Charlton, as an AFC supporting friend of mine (a club who lost a huge amount of rev due to their xmas home games vs Charlton and Pompy being called off) reminds me, Charlton have 68 players under contract.

Is that relevant? All clubs have first-team squads limited to 22 players, and they need to have 14 players, including a goalkeeper, available either from that squad, or from U21 players who have started a league match, in order to be expected to play. I am assuming that clubs have to let the EFL know which players are unavailable for the league to agree to the matches being postponed.

Now maybe Charlton could have got a squad together from uncapped youth players if they'd really wanted to, in the same way that we could have blooded an untried youth keeper at Wigan (or in subsequent games), but we didn't. And given the anxiety levels around Covid outbreaks, I can't say I blame clubs for being more cautious than normal as long as they're acting within the stated protocols. Down my way Plymouth have just called off two sell-out home matches due to Covid cases and injuries. Do you think that is a promotion rival 'timewasting'?

Look at the EFL fixtures in the last 7 days - 75% of them are off. Focussing on Charlton seems a little petty, even for a Wombles fan.