The United Kingdom government has given green light to sporting events from the first day of next month but the Premier League restart had been scheduled for June 12. Now as per an exclusive report in The Telegraph, this date could be pushed further back.
The report claims: “The restart of the Premier League season is expected to be pushed back by at least seven days from June 12 to June 19 after players and managers expressed their concerns that major questions needed to be answered over the risks of a return to full-contact training and games being played again.
“During meetings on Wednesday, both groups agreed to resume socially-distanced sessions next week and the 20 managers were presented with the safety protocol for a return to training before player representatives, in most cases captains, met with the Premier League in the afternoon.
“The protocol covered just “phase one” of the return, which restricts players and coaches to small groups and will be approved at Monday’s Premier League meeting for a resumption on Tuesday.
“There was a consensus among managers and players that they want to restart and are largely comfortable with phase one: groups of five players working with three coaches and all socially distanced. It is understood only one manager questioned outright a return to training and by the end of the meeting, he was satisfied that phase one would be safe for players and coaches.
“But there remains widespread unease over what happens after that and whether managers and their squads are being given enough preparation time ahead of the proposed June 12 restart. The Premier League is listening to those concerns and is prepared to push back the resumption by at least a week.”
Premier League restart to be delayed?
Right now there’s a lot of concerns which needs to be tackled before the 2019-20 season can be resumed and one of them is the player’s contracts, most of which will expire on June 30th and the current campaign will surely go beyond this date.
But the EPL authorities have come up with a solution to his issue in a statement where they have allowed clubs to extend the contracts of their players – upon mutual agreements.
The official statement claims: “Clubs were concerned over expiring player contracts and registration issues posed by the potential of the 2019/20 season extending beyond 30 June.
“So, it was agreed by all Shareholders that clubs and players can mutually agree to extend their contracts beyond 30 June until the end of the season.”
Now the other thing which remains to be sorted out is playing the matches at neutral venues which is something most of the clubs are not in favour of.
As per rumours, clubs like Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur have opposed the idea of neutral venues as they want to play in the usual format of home and away matches.
