Showing posts with label COVID-19. Show all posts
Showing posts with label COVID-19. Show all posts

Wednesday, 27 May 2020

Ramsdale will need to recover quickly to be ready for Project restart

It was a shock to Aron Ramsdale that he tested positive for COVID-19 in the latest round of tests. But he could be back training after seven days of self-isolation without losing too much training time. Ramsdale has been such a key figure this season that it is difficult to see any other keeper take his place in the run-in.
Ramsdale will be keen to get back to training.

While Aaron says he has no visible symptoms and has not been in contact with other people, he has still managed to come into contact with the virus. It is lucky in many respects that he has been tested and that he can get on top of the virus as quickly as he can. Hopefully, he doesn't get ill and can return to training soon with no harm done.

 It is another case though where a person shows no physical sign of the illness and yet is carrying it. Even while fewer people are being infected, the risk is still there. The rate will probably start to increase again if the amount of people continue to flock to the beaches in huge numbers and Bournemouth is a potential hot spot for that.
 With full physical contact getting the thumbs up from the government and the players to decide on it today, we are likely to see players get much closer to each other and we just have to hope the testing is good enough to catch any players who have the virus. Trust in the system is paramount. If players don't feel safe the whole 'Project Restart' is going to come under threat. The tests that are really going to be important are the next two rounds, when games are going to be almost upon us.

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Ramsdale has time to recover but others who test positive in the weeks to come might find that they will miss games.

Previous Post on Cherry Chimes - Bournemouth player tests positive for COVID-19
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Monday, 25 May 2020

Bournemouth player tests positive for COVID-19

The fact that an AFCB player has tested positive for COVID-19 tells us that this virus is still all around us and it doesn't respect what you do or who you are. Anyone can catch the coronavirus and I imagine the cleaning around Dean Court has gone into overdrive since the learning of this second batch of tests has picked out a Bournemouth player, who may not even have thought that he was carrying the virus.
One AFCB player picks up COVID-19
While that player will go into self-isolation for seven days, it is good that Hull City are the only other club that I have herd of who also say they had a positive case confirmed in this second round of testing that had 996 tests. It is difficult to know how the authorities feel about what is acceptable for football to go ahead, if a small number of players are still picking up symptoms and having positive tests. While we may be a month away from the action of a match day, perhaps this is acceptable, but once we get into June, who wants to play if there is a sudden spout of cases?

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I am sure the Bournemouth player will not want to rush back in any case. Once a player has had this they are going to be tired from fighting it off, and it may mean that player is not going to be available for the restart of the season, having missed at least a week of training. Our main concern has to be that, whoever it is, they recover quickly. Afro-Caribbean and other ethnic groups have been found to be some of the main groups of people who have been hit hardest with the cornavirus, and it is not unnoticeable that football squads these days have a lot of people from these ethnic groups.

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There has been some relaxation in the lockdown with certain people being allowed to get back to work, footballers among them. However, the fact that the coronavirus is still being transmitted and can be found among AFCB's football players, should be a warning to everyone that we are not clear of this thing yet and decisions that are made right now are absolutely crucial to get right.

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Previous post on Cherry Chimes - Do fans want season ticket refunds?
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Friday, 22 May 2020

Players must be allowed to make personal decisions over playing

The fact that six Premier league players and staff proved positive for COVID-19 symptoms last weekend has already put doubts in some players' minds if they want to go back to training. Jamie Redknapp has said on SkySports that more players will quit training like Tory Deeney and N'Golo  Kante. The integrity of any competition is therefore shattered, and it's hard to see the end of the Premier League season being anything more than a fudge solution.
Players decisions should be respected.
The players who decide not to train and play will surely find that they are not paid which will probably lead to more disputes. But if you can't do your job you don't get paid, there are millions of people that have lost their jobs in recent weeks and months over the coronavirus, so Premier League players will get little sympathy there.
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I do worry about AFCB as it already has a small squad. Many of the players have young families, including Eddie Howe. We see them every time they have their walk around at the end of the season. The players and staff have hard decisions to make over whether they really feel safe enough to go and train and even more critically go and play games in June.

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At the moment it all seems too soon and a high risk. Things may look better in a months time or we could get the start of a second wave of coronavirus. It all feels like an experiment at the moment, but whether there is really a good safety net in place is hard to see. Players are going to have to go with their gut instinct and I only hope that fans will respect the decisions of individual players who will surely have worries about pulling out. Players need more big stars to come out and say if they are unsure about training. It would take pressure off of others who may feel vulnerable, if they come out and say they don't feel comfortable about playing. The mental health staff at clubs really have their work cut out in the next few weeks.
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In other news, Jordan Ibe has done himself no favours again having his hair cut and ignoring social distancing rules, and he's off for sure on 1 July, says SkySports.

 Previous post on Cherry Chimes - Comebacks are part of what have made AFCB great
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Sunday, 26 April 2020

Money before reason for quick Premier League return

Although talks have been taking place behind closed doors about when the Premier League could return, according to The Sun newspaper, I can't see there being anything but big risks if it does return as soon as 8 June, as has been proposed. Playing behind closed doors is still going to mean some 250 people being tested each game, and the safety of players, the police and ball boys etc is still going to be at risk.
It will be a long time before we see handshakes for sure.
To me it talks of money being put before the lives of many. We all want football back, but like Georgie Bingham on TalkSport, I don't really think it can be done safely while social distancing is in place. What choice to the players have in this matter? I suspect none at all. It will be down to the Premier League and Chief Executives or Chairman if each club to say of they can play or not, and there will be pressure put on everybody to go along with it.

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However this season is completed it will always be a season that has been disrupted and for that reason is not going to be a totally true reflection of what might have happened, if games had bot been postponed. We can pretend that playing behind closed-doors makes little difference, but we all know it will take some teams more time than others to get a good feeling about that situation. The winners will be those who adapt quickest to this new non-atmosphere football. But there will be a bitter taste for the losers.

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Of course, if the Premier League goes ahead there will be mounting pressure from the English football league to play out their remaining games. How easy will it be to allow all clubs to complete their fixtures? If it is difficult for the Premier League it is going to be even harder for the lower leagues, who just don' have big operating budgets. Will their safety be as tight as the barriers that will be put in place by the Premier League?
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My big worry in all this is that the fans will just have to lump it, whatever is decided. Fans won't be able to travel to games, or cheer on their team. Perhaps they will be able to see it on terrestrial TV, but what happens for those TV companies that have exclusive rights? The whole thing is quite a mess and with players contracts running out on 30 June, I wonder how much of the general chatter is more desperation knowing that the time has pretty much run out to get football back. The Dutch league has already abandoned the season and if more leagues go that way, questions will be asked over the safety of any attempt to try and resurrect the game before social distancing has been removed.

Previous post on Cherry Chimes  – Is Howe right to play Adam Smith on the left ahead of Rico?
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Sunday, 19 April 2020

What chance of an early Premier League resumption?

I have no doubt that the authorities will do all they can to try and get the Premier League season completed. But I just hope they don't make a fiasco of it by playing behind closed doors and ramming it into five weeks. That is the preferred plan though by the sounds of the outcome of the recent Premier League meeting, which has pencilled in a hopeful start date of 8 June 2020 as a best case scenario, as reported by SkySports.

When will we see something like this again?
The game won't be the same no matter how the league continues. If games do resume in June it will be an intense period with the fate of AFCB among other clubs hanging by a thread. But I feel that clubs like Bournemouth will be at a disadvantage of we have to play behind closed doors. The Bournemouth fans do give the team an extra man and the players respond to their presence and singing. But a resumption of some kind has to be better than halting the season now and taking the league positions as final and seeing AFCB relegated on goal difference without kicking another ball.
The Premier League will meet again on 1 May to reassess the situation of COVID-19, but the date of 30 June is the one that looms large with players contracts ending. It's a deadline that isn't going to shift, and if things aren't settled by the end of June I can only see the season being abandoned if players remove their service with their contracts coming to an end.
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The solutions will be worked out by much more clever individuals than me, but being fair is going to be very difficult. The pressure will only mount as we get into the summer months and every week when the government extends the lockdown, there is more doubt on whether the season will be completed at all.

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Previous post on Cherry Chimes - Is Boruc a top keeper trainer in waiting?
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Sunday, 12 April 2020

Has Chris Wilder shown Eddie Howe and others a better way to manage?

I think we have to be careful when judging manages of one club against another. For a start they don't have the same players and probably play in different ways, but results are of course the bread and butter of the game, and you'd have to say things have gone rather better for ChrisWilder than most English team manager's this season, including our own Eddie Howe.
Eddie Howe has been well behind the results of Chris Wilder this season.
Does this mean that Eddie Howe should take a leaf out of Chris Wilder's book? Some would say yes, a stronger back line and an ethos of not to concede would surely do wonders for Bournemouth's game. But in trying to do that, it can take away the best part of Bournemouth's offensive game, and in some ways I think that is partly what has happened this season. There has been bad luck and injuries but Bournemouth's defence has worked hard to try and be more effective.

So what has Sheffield United got over teams like Bournemouth? I think they haven't been scared to play their game as they know it. They haven't been overly worried about how other teams might play and set up, but have stuck to their own game plan and looked to repel teams first and then build their game as the minutes go by.
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The Blades might not have top strikers or midfielders, but as a unit they are extremely effective. They play for one another and being a team is half the battle. How much team spirit is really at AFCB now is perhaps not as much as Eddie Howe would like us to think there is. There have been problems with players like Jordan Ibe and absentees from the long injury list which hits morale. Morale is great when you are winning, but when one problem is added on top of another and another, things spiral out of control and AFCB have been in that spiral.

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Breaking the fall is perhaps possible now with this COVID-19 outbreak, but the strength of AFCB will only be better if they come through the end of this season by escaping the drop. If they fail to do that, then we could see how deep the divisions really have been. It is not a case of other managers having better styles or players all the time, sometimes your club needs to look at home to see where it has slipped up.

 Former post on Cherry Chimes - How should we rate Philip Billing's first season at AFCB?
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Wednesday, 25 March 2020

Footballers shouldn't play until it's safe for all

I can't get my head around the continued talk about a game a day from June onwards for the Premier League, with perhaps the players having games behind closed doors in neutral venues just, so the season can be completed. Oh, and of course so that we can all see it free on TV!
Players can't take risks with their health.
While it all seems ideal for the broadcasters, the revenue for the Premier League and a compromise for the supporters, what about the players? They are not guinea pigs. The safety of players has to be just as paramount as the fans, and it also gives no safety to the staff putting on the matches or the officials. I wonder what the thinking is at times. The world can manage without football for a while.
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The players need to train in a safe environment and they need to train as a team as it is a team game. If they can't train together, the authorities can't expect them to play as soon as June. We don't know that when and hopefully they do play again, but the coronavirus has to be completely eliminated. 
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I frankly can't understand why these kind of discussions are being broadcast by the BBC for example as it only fuels the hopes of fans that the games will be back on as soon as possible no matter what. The Premier League has a great product, but it could turn it into a circus if it doesn't look after the remaining part of the season.

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Safety first, has to be the way forward for any major sorting event in the next few months and if it is not safe then there can be no games.



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Tuesday, 17 March 2020

Begovic anticipates summer feast of football

While there are all the negative thoughts swelling around how to deal with COVID-19, Asmir Begovic has spoken out on saying how we can use the period when sport returns to fall back in love with football. He doesn't want a null and void season but rather fancies a football feast with multiple games every week.
Begovic keeps his eye on the Premier League even though he is currently playing in Italy.
I like Begovic's optimisim. Perhaps goalkeepers are more prone to get excited about many games in a week as they don't have to do quite as much running around as the outfield players. The on loan Begovic, at Inter Milan, is right about one thing though - playing behind closed doors is just not great for the players or the fans. It is important that the football authorities understand that the fans are an important part of the game. If they don't get that then we might as well as by online subscriptions and forget about turning up at our local ground. Armchair football is not what supporters live for all the time. You can't beat watching your team play in front of you and that's what we want to get back to when it is safe to do so.

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It will be all ears on the UEFA meeting when we hear what their thoughts will be, but it is great to hear as many views as possible in this time that we have before early-April to try and make sure the right decisions are made. 

Optimism aside, we have a long way to go  to get to that stage of seeing games in the Premier League again with the government not supporting mass events with policing or health care, as well as advocating social distancing, and I am sure more important things are on most people's minds at the moment. Football can take a rest and we could find that some good comes out of this period, even if it doesn't seem like that at the moment.

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In other news, Media Referee is claiming that Napoli are keen on taking Nathan Aké in the summer to Serie A.
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Sunday, 15 March 2020

How easy will it be to restart the league in early April?

With Bournemouth's players not set to come back to training until 23 March, they'll have some 10 days to try and keep their fitness levels up with their personal training schedules that they have been sent home with. COVID-19 is not suddenly going to let up though and even training in groups could be something that is not advised come late March.
It may be a long time before we see this many people around Dean Court.
We are in unprecedented times. The cancellation of football has a lot of knock on problems for those who work for the game and suddenly will have a lack of income. It's not the players in the Premier League that will suffer, but the lower leagues and the men and women that do the jobs around games that will really feel the financial impact.

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But for the players that Bournemouth have, it is going to be mentally challenging to keep focussed and dedicated with all the news that is swirling about on whether the season should continue or not. Even when they may be ready to come back other teams might not be in the same position with a number of players not yet fit to play.
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If the players do keep their fitness levels going and do come back and are ready to play at the start of April, it will be a remarkable effort. This won't seem like a normal international break. There are things going on that have already affected the club with five employees in self-isolation, and who knows if more relatives will catch this pandemic in the days and weeks to come. I don't think this is a switch that the Premier League can just turn on and off. As time goes by there will be more and more pressure for clarity of how things can restart and more and more questions coming from clubs that are not feeling ready to resume.
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We could be in a very different situation come the end of March if matters get worse as expected. Getting to games could be just as hard as trying to catch a flight to certain destinations. This could be an extended holiday period for football and we might not see anther game until late summer or even the autumn.

It will be a big day next Thursday when UEFA has to decide what happens with the European Championship, which is likely to be postponed until next year. Then they may well start trying to sort out what happens with the Champions League and Europa League. I'd imagine the Premier League and other European League would have to follow the lead of what will happen with these major fixtures and whether this does free up time to complete the domestic leagues, or whether COVID-19 makes trying to complete the fixture list an impossibility.

 The Premier League may have to make a definitive call on 3 April, because the players can't just be training for a date wen they may or may not have a game to play.

 Previous post on Cherry Chimes - Could the season be abandoned and save AFCB's blushes
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Saturday, 14 March 2020

Could the season be abandoned and save AFCB's blushes?

While the Premier League has suspended the next two weeks of games, there is no guarantee that the situation with COVID-19 will be any better after that period. In fact, it could be a lot worse. So when does the Premier League come to the conclusion that the season can be restarted? It could be difficult even going by advice of the World Health Association. If there remains nine games to be played come May, the Premier League could have an even bigger decision to make.
Take a Spring break lads.
My feeling is that if the resumption of the Premier League does not happen in two weeks time, I get a distinct feeling that the season might be abandoned. That causes lots of problems. There are TV contracts that won't have been fulfilled and while moving a couple of week's fixtures is difficult an inconvenient but possible, moving more and more games is just not going to be workable moving into the summer. 

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Some pundits have been saying award the titles and relegations based on what the tables show now. But that would open up a world of court cases from relegated teams that would have reasonable grounds to say they had not had a full season, and other teams had played different fixtures which may have given them an advantage with the games left to come. There have been suggestions that there are no relegations, the title is awarded to Liverpool and the top six fill the European laces, while the top two Championship clubs are promoted and five teams are relegated form the Premier League in 2020-21. But I just don't see the Premier League wanting more teams - it was always designed as a way of cutting the numbers of clubs in the top flight which used to be 24.

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The only decision I think the Premier League would be able to come to if they couldn't fulfil the fixtures would be to reset the table as it was back in August 2019. No promotions, no relegations, not titles. The season would not have happened. That would be hard on those who were looking to be promoted from lower leagues, but I can't see a fairer way of concluding the football in 2020 if COVID-19 makes it impossible for fixtures to be completed.
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Bournemouth, like Norwich and Aston Villa be saved by an abandoned season. It would be a first, but these clubs earned their right to a full season to retain their status and I am sure it will be in the contracts that they have to play a 38 game season to be relegated. Playing behind closed doors won't do it, because the players and managers are also coming under the influence of this pandemic.

TalkSpot were debating if the season should be scrapped yesterday:

Some fan views (ED - apologies for the four letter words on some tweets)






 Previous post on Cherry Chimes - COVID-19 disrupts football until at least April
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Friday, 13 March 2020

COVID-19 disrupts football until at least April

I was hoping that matters would not progress so rapidly that the Premier League would intervene to postpone its matches, but the spread of COVID-19 has had a dramatic effect on the sporting calendar. No matches until at least 3 April 2020, will have some fans disappointed but lives are at stake and among Bournemouth football club Artur Boruc and four staff members have been self-isolating as possible coronavirus cases.

Arur Boruc was named among those who might have caught COVID-19.
Eddie Hoe's press conference for the Crystal Palace game never took place with these events taking the football world apart. The Guardian newspaper ha reported that clubs in the Premier League so far having taken the guidelines on self-isolating players or staff include - : Arsenal, Bournemouth, Chelsea, Everton, Leicester, Manchester City and Watford. In such circumstances football was never going to go ahead this weekend. It is a shock that it took the Premier league to make the decision, while mass gatherings are still being permitted in the UK at the moment.
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What it means for fixture congestion and rescheduling is hard to tell. AFCB will remain in the bottom three until at least the star of April now and the season could go on to the end of June or even enter July. The clubs will also need to work out what is happening with tickets for games and fans will need to adjust their travel plans. AFCB has given its advice for supporters.

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I am not sure how much news there will be on the Cherry Chimes over the next few weeks. I haven't missed a post in seven year, but it could be a testing period depending on what news filters out on how players are managing to keep fit and prepare for the restart of the Premier League. It does of course give more time for Steve Cook and others to try and get back from their injuries. UTCIAD!

 A speedy recovery to AFCB staff and Artur Boruc and all others that have contracted symptoms of COVID-19.
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