Chaos will see this title win tainted by an asterisk
FOOTBALL’S pulling out all the stops to create the illusion that everything is normal. There’s the fake fan noise, pointless stadium announcers and even the odd bit of pre-match pyrotechnics. But nothing is normal, of course, and as we plunge deeper into the current predicament the Premier League season is turning into organised chaos. This competition is becoming so inequitable that whoever wins the 2020-2021 edition must accept there will always be an asterisk next to their name. Elite football demands a capacity to deliver in the eye of the storm
— shutting out the noise to convert a penalty or pick a pass in a febrile, partisan atmosphere. No such capacity applies now. Then there was the unfathomable decision to allow some clubs the benefit of fans and others none, depending on how grave the local Covid situation happened to be, shredding the principle of fairness which the Premier League is supposed to be based on. You needed to be there, in the stadium, to appreciate just how much advantage 2,000 fans actually provided to Everton when they beat Arsenal before Christmas. The noise was so substantial that you wondered if there was any amplification. Either way, it was a very big advantage. The chanting in the Liverpool v Tottenham live coverage a few days earlier also boomed out. That particular piece of competitive imbalance — which should never have been permitted in the first place — is unlikely to be with us for much longer. But the new coronavirus strain has also brought a new strand of argument — about a team’s right to request a game be cancelled. Everton’s unvarnished fury with Manchester City’s successful petition to get Monday’s match at Goodison scrapped carried a firm hint that they suspected a manipulation of the rules. That’s what an insistence on ‘full disclosure’ and clarity on ‘why this decision was taken’ — to quote their press release — actually means. And strictly speaking, the guidance, when football began after the first lockdown, was that if a Premier League team had 14 fit players then a match should go ahead. But that advice was issued long before a new, more virulent strain of the virus was racing through Britain, affecting young more than old. The words of Newcastle manager Steve Bruce — whose team are still shaken by a Covid outbreak earlier in the month when their match against Aston Villa was cancelled — demonstrate why that arbitrary number is now meaningless and why Premier League clubs should be entitled to close down their training ground and disappear from the fray.
‘I hope, for City’s sake, that they don’t go into double figures,’ Bruce said. ‘We are witnessing the after-effects.’ The chaos and levels of infection run so deep in Leagues One and Two, where testing is less incessant, that Rochdale club doctor Dr Wes Tensel yesterday called for the season to be suspended. The Premier League must be prepared for a potential shutdown, too. Figures released yesterday showed 18 positive tests among their clubs between December 21 and 27 — the highest since they started testing. There will be resistance to any notion of a temporary suspension, of course. But the practical obstacles, including a summer European Championship tournament which allows minimal room for manoeuvre now, must be dismissed if the science suggests otherwise. All that can be said with certainty about the five months ahead is that there will be uncertainties and inequalities and challenges, making the act of winning a football match more of a lottery than ever, before one team emerges as champions. Champions with an asterisk next to their name.