Davefevs

I will be amazed that if we start back later than 30.06, that it will be with 71 EFL clubs. No 23 Prem, 24 Champ ( we lose top 3, gain Lg1 top 3), etc.

not in PPG. If you want to go with a pool panel / DL method, then my argument is you should do it for all 46 games, not just the remaining 9....which is futile imho

no need, all played 37

After some pretty poor daily press briefings I can’t wait for Johnson to do today’s and see how he delivers today’s message. My expectations are pretty low!!! Yep. Null and void is not an option imho. You cannot expunge 76% of a season. I am slowly coming round to: - points per game plus - no playoffs (team in best relegation place gets a reprieve) City lose out....tough luck. Prem: Liverpool win title Sheff Utd leapfrog Wolves Arsenal leapfrog Spurs Norwich and Villa relegated. Watford get a reprieve which would’ve been a relegation on one goal otherwise! Championship: Leeds and West Brom promoted, no playoff Relegated: Luton and Barnsley, Charlton reprieved Lg1: Coventry and Rotherham promoted, no playoff Relegated: Bolton and Southend, Tranmere reprieve (23 team league) Lg2: Crewe, Swindon and Plymouth promoted, no playoff No relegation to National League, but Barrow promoted to make 24 clubs and a 72 team EFL again. In each division nobody loses out on goal difference in a promotion or relegation scenario, there is daylight in each case. Clubs stop wasting money working out his to get to the end of this season, they focus on starting in whatever format for 20/21 season, whenever that is. 30/6 contract issues go away. Thoughts? Germany started to see infection rates increases since relaxation of lockdown. Lessons for our government, which they won’t like using!!!

I might not explain this very well, so bear with me. According to Whitty last week, only 3-10% of people have had covid. If we see death rates falling, that must be a result of less new cases. Eventually we will get to a point where new cases / deaths are at an acceptable (!!!) level to release the lockdown in whatever way they decide. At that point it’s perfectly possible that only 15% (that might be too high) of people have had covid. How much longer of lockdown does it take to get new cases / deaths down to a palatable figure? At what point does the recent 7 day rolling average decrease start to flatten also? Does it even get to an acceptable level, let alone 0 deaths per day? Lockdown is now about 5 weeks. Covid might take 2 weeks to get to you. Covid might stay with you for 2 weeks. So why are we getting 4k new cases per day (of those tested)? Because lockdown isn’t lockdown! It’s half-arsed. 880 tests so far / 66m people = 1.3% of the population tested....and that’s assuming you only test a person once, which we know is untrue. 100k tests per day will take 18 months plus to complete. When I hear Whitty use the term “Peak” and “first phase”, I’m really surprised nobody has asked him what kind of profile of new cases and deaths the next and subsequent phases will have? Without vaccine or drug treatments, I can’t see how say 70% of the population are gonna get back to “normal” in any timeline. If we’ve been slow to rein it in initially, how can they slowly allow it to infect to get enough people to have it to create a smaller death rate? I can’t work that out. I think too many people think this is a single phase and that we are coming out the other size. It might be one phase....lasting a year....I don’t think anyone is prepared for that.

I think any club that utilises certain covid business support schemes will be on a watch list for the business they undertake afterwards. I suspect that will apply to many businesses wider than football too.

Interesting from Matt Law. Hmrc better update the terms of CJRS quickly!!!!

Car usage starting to rise....suspect some getting bored.

No, never gonna be 100%. Forgetting coronavirus for a sec.....95% of the public (I suspect more) are decent folk, let down by the minority. So if the same 95% are staying indoors, the 5% appear amplified during this epidemic. I think coronavirus may have highlighted a group of the population who appear decent enough generally, but are inherently selfish. That selfishness has shown their true colours, toilet roll hoarding, flouting social distancing, etc. Personally I don’t think Coronavirus has changed many people, we are just seeing amplifications of both good and bad behaviour....and perhaps a better insight into what some people are really like. There are some people I know who I thought were knobs (gut feel)....now I know they are ??? Sorry, the above makes me sound like a Saint. ?

I get what you’re saying. Is the difference that football players can’t socially distance on the pitch, unlike many of us working / shopping who can stay 2m apart? Because today and post lockdown, we can still catch it, people are still catching it. Resumption will undoubtably be driven by £s, far more than it will be ease people’s boredom. The deferral of games at the mo’ is putting many clubs at serious risk of not even getting as far as resuming! If it’s possible / safe to resume and complete by say end of Aug, I say go for it. If it’s not, I’d say it’s because the country is still suffering massively and football should be way down the list of priorities. I think it’s a bit of a barometer, if football is good to start, it’s because everything else is also better too. I guess a better way of looking at it is that football shouldn’t be an exception.

The reason we have Coronavirus in this country ultimately goes back to it being started and spread from China, agreed. The reason we have death numbers as high as they are is for several reasons, many of them stemming from political / government decision / indecision and historical choices meaning a lack of preparation for a major pandemic. I don’t get the constant jibes of “stop bringing politics into it, it’s not the time” when someone legitimately challenges the government on something they’ve done, said they were gonna do, etc. I couldn’t care less who is in charge. If it was Corbyn and Starmer playing this the same way as Johnson, I’d be just as critical (I was during their election campaign). I see deceit, lack of transparency, failure to answer decent questions properly (in amongst too many shit questions admittedly), Inconsistent comparisons with other countries to suit agenda. This is a government treating a large chunk of the country as idiots. The press / media isn’t helping either. Look at Cuomo in New York. It’s a disaster over there numbers wise, yet he’s leading his State through integrity, trust, transparency, empathy...treating them as adults, telling them from his heart. This country is massively divided, and I feel lost, the odd one out, sat somewhere in the middle. I’ve missed it, but not as much as I thought. Sky news 501 on more than Sky Sports. Don’t watch re-runs of football games dominating the tv schedule, but quite like watching golf and cricket re-runs. I haven’t been out since March 5th, apart from one trip to Budgens / Petrol Station - to get served through the late-night hatch the week after when we ran out of milk and bread. Settled into a new schedule, of getting the kids up, helping with home schooling, watching the daily briefing, FaceTiming parents, virtual catch up with mates. Tonight is family quiz. Even my cousin who lives in the States is joining in. I’m quiz master tonight....been preparing my picture quiz, rather than posting on OTIB. Stay safe everyone.

Talk that rather than clawback, Sky / BT could look to add an extra year (protecting them from having to negotiate / tender for another big tv deal for another year) or request additional tv games for free over the rest of the deal

Did he have any goldfish for sale?

Socking as some of the amounts might seem, the role also has to be taken into consideration. I know I had a bit of a joke with Scotty Murray on Twitter last night re this, but he is more than a kit-man....he’s an ambassador for the club too. No idea what he’s on, but he should be on more than the person who works at a launderette. Digressing slightly, remember Howard from the Halifax adverts. He was initially and employee of Halifax, but he ended up leaving Halifax, because they couldn’t pay him enough within the grade / salary band to justify his added value and media commitments ....so he went freelance. True story.

They appear to be a bit of a mess, and good ole Mel over at Derby now struggling because players didn’t like his 50% cut / deferral proposal.

What I’m saying is that SL hasn’t had to underwrite all of his £24m (£8m x 3) yet. There is room imho to pay everyone their full wages for 2-3 months. However that assumes a restart at some point within the next 2-3 months. I think the doubt comes from reduced revenues when football does resume....and smoothing the revenue loss by reducing wages. It’s a fine balancing act when the future is unknown. I think there is a lot of logic to the transfer ban part, but as I see it there won’t even be a transfer window for this to be a factor. Loans are a different kettle of fish. Take Afobe, it’s not black and white. From a playing point of view, Stoke might prefer him back. But can his registration be changed back to Stoke mid-season, outside a window? If not, they might argue it’s beneficial to weaken City. However they might argue it’s better City are stronger to help beat Stoke’s relegation rivals!!! So that’s a consideration! Financially, Stoke would end up having to pay all of Benik’s wages. Currently City are contributing some / all of his wages. Can they afford to bring him back? Especially if he can’t play! Do that’s another consideration!! On the flip, City might want to send him back, ok, unlikely in Afobe’s case...but maybe not in Henriksen’s case. So, Hull might be the loser in this scenario. People are throwing new rules out there without consideration of what it might mean in reality or other factors that might mean its unworkable....or work against their club!

On the basis of my calculations we have some leeway before FFP becomes an issues for the 3 year period ending this season. Across Bristol City Holdings (BCFC and Ashton Gate Ltd) the wage bill was £30.6m last season. Let’s just say it’s risen 10%....so £34m for 19/20 season (£650k per week). Across the board the club are saving between 20-30% of the wage bill. Everyone has taken a cut in some shape or form, whether deferred for 3 months, or reduction or furloughed. That buys the club 3 months to see what happens, what income streams become available going forward, e.g. Robinstv, iFollow, plus any clawback from Sky. CJRS is likely to be a small percentage of the overall wage bill, but buys time. Lots of sense in this until you see how some owners might take advantage of it!!! As I understand it, each club was asked to submit its costs / expenses for the rest of the season. I assume this was based on no further income. You would like to think the EFL could issue a grant to cover or build that into its calculations to keep a level playing field.

The Mark Ashton video (5m45s) confirms: - players taken a 3 month deferral (percentages around the 30% mark) - staff taken a pay cut (c20% we believe) - non-playing staff some taken a pay cut, some placed on furlough and pay reduced (using the CJRS scheme) Lots of confusion yesterday re terminology of staff, in this case it means the likes of Lee, Macca and Deano, etc, as opposed to non-playing staff, like admin staff etc. Players will have different contractual obligations to staff and non-playing staff.

Good post....got really mixed views on this, keep changing my mind about where I stand. Would it be fairer (in future) that those businesses that used CJRS pay more Corporation Tax to recover it? Guess some would never pay it back???

Yep, agree. Ah well, more taxes to pay going forward.

I’m disappointed we’ve furloughed some non-playing staff and will use CJRS to pay them 80%. The whole range of Coronavirus business support packages are ill-conceived, and although the IT Delivery of CJRS has been a success, the number of people falling between gaps is very poor. The loan scheme is not being taken up quick enough as businesses don’t pass the risk criteria leaving them in limbo / ready to go bust. Add into this that they allow us to make moral judgement on whether it is right or wrong shows how unsuitable these are as a set of solutions. I know many of us love SL, but I don’t see how this is any different in principle to Branson.

We don’t know that, but I agree, I don’t see how you can without undermining the integrity of this season. Re deferred wages for players and staff or clubs using CJRS, it would create an unfair playing field for clubs battling to sign a player...and therefore I tend to agree that transfers should be banned / scrutinised until players are repaid their deferred wages. This is complicated when it comes to CJRS, as this is not repayable (apart from via hiked taxes in future), so you’d probably need a rule that says cannot sign a player whilst you have furloughed employees. This will test the moral compass of clubs ?

Assumes there is a transfer window!!! Personally I can’t see there being one during the 19/20 season.

Yeah, I know...?