Football: The Closed Season

[mormont]

To be fair, relegation from a domestic league is none of UEFA's business, so saying that they're 'letting' leagues cancel relegation is perhaps a bit of a stretch.

The point remains that, for example, Watford vs Southampton can have no effect on European qualification so why play it? To fulfil the TV contract can surely be the only reason.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

6 minutes ago, mormont said:

To be fair, relegation from a domestic league is none of UEFA's business, so saying that they're 'letting' leagues cancel relegation is perhaps a bit of a stretch.

The point remains that, for example, Watford vs Southampton can have no effect on European qualification so why play it? To fulfil the TV contract can surely be the only reason.

Duh.

That's the reason why the NBA is trying to figure out how to make a 70 game regular season. They need to hit that benchmark to fulfill their contractual obligations. Even if they could start the playoffs right now, they'd still have to delay them otherwise their partners aren't paying, at least in full.

I'd be really curious to see what some of the advertising deals look like in times like these.

[baxus]

25 minutes ago, Jeor said:

I wonder what the financial consequences are for the EPL clubs. If they don't play, do they lose the unfinished portion of TV money? If they play, do they get it all paid? A bunch of clubs must be nervously looking at their balance sheets.

Not an expert, obviously, but I don't see why EPL clubs would get less than a full amount of TV money if all games get played. I mean, it's highly unlikely that there's a clause in the contract that states that broadcasters pay less money if matches get played at neutral venues or behind closed doors or something.

[Jeor]

36 minutes ago, baxus said:

Not an expert, obviously, but I don't see why EPL clubs would get less than a full amount of TV money if all games get played. I mean, it's highly unlikely that there's a clause in the contract that states that broadcasters pay less money if matches get played at neutral venues or behind closed doors or something.

Yes, the clubs will be desperate for that TV money and if the season is played out that should be lucrative for the clubs. You'd have to think there's a lot of pent-up demand, the EPL restarting should get monster TV ratings so there shouldn't be any complaints from them even if it's behind closed doors.

[ljkeane]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

To be fair, relegation from a domestic league is none of UEFA's business, so saying that they're 'letting' leagues cancel relegation is perhaps a bit of a stretch.

Well, no, they couldn't have outright told leagues what to do but they could have said they don't consider it a proper season and as such no Dutch teams will qualify for Europe next time. Or they could have tried to organise moving the start of next season back to give the Dutch and French leagues a chance to complete the season. The fact that they've signed off on the Dutch solution removes a potential concern for other leagues thinking about doing it.

1 hour ago, mormont said:

The point remains that, for example, Watford vs Southampton can have no effect on European qualification so why play it? To fulfil the TV contract can surely be the only reason.

Well I don't think it's clear cut that all the teams don't want there to be relegation. Obviously the teams threatened with it would prefer not to have it but I'd imagine teams who have already played those down at the bottom would like them to have something to play for when they play other sides.

[Iskaral Pust]

The relegation topic is tricky because it’s like turkeys voting for Thanksgiving.  If Championship clubs were included in the vote then it would be a different conversation, obviously.  Most teams have no significant interest in enforcing relegation this year, and a few teams have a huge interest in deferring it.  So it will naturally become the point of compromise: e.g. West Ham (already vocal on this) get a few other strugglers to  say the season should be voided, so then the other teams will offer to complete the season sans relegation.

I think relegation should be included because that sense of peril, doom and relief is so important to the stakes, and often makes late season matches more unpredictable.  And five of the bottom six clubs are currently tightly clustered.  Plus it’s really unfair on the Championship teams, although I don’t know how far down the league it’s possible to complete the season so it will already seem unfair to select promoted teams.  But perhaps they could still do their play-offs based on PPG league table now.

[mormont]

3 hours ago, ljkeane said:

Well I don't think it's clear cut that all the teams don't want there to be relegation.

I mean, I doubt Liverpool or Man City have an opinion. Allegedly six clubs are opposed to relegation. I'm going to say I could hazard a guess as to which six.

 

[ljkeane]

1 minute ago, mormont said:

I mean, I doubt Liverpool or Man City have an opinion. Allegedly six clubs are opposed to relegation. I'm going to say I could hazard a guess as to which six.

 

I doubt City care too much. I think Liverpool would probably quite like the season to be closed out in as close to the normal way as possible. Liverpool aren't getting relegated so I'd imagine their priorities in terms of actually playing the season are not risking the loss of their tv money and getting to say they won the league in as ironclad a fashion as possible.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

4 hours ago, Jeor said:

I wonder what the financial consequences are for the EPL clubs. If they don't play, do they lose the unfinished portion of TV money? If they play, do they get it all paid? A bunch of clubs must be nervously looking at their balance sheets.

Can only speak of the German Bundesliga situation, but I assume the contracts between the EPL and broadcasters will look very similar.

TV money is paid in installments (I think it were 4 installments). The last one was due at some point in April, I think (or it's due now in May?). The broadcasters (SKY as the major rights holder, Discovery (Eurosport), German Public Broadcasting Service, DAZN etc.) agreed to pay the last installments under the condition that the games would get played. And yes, a lot of clubs were anxiously looking at their balance sheets. If the games don't get paid afterall, they have to refund the broadcasters on that last installment. So while they're was loud sigh of relief over getting the TV money for now. The contract situation is simple, it's basically broadcasters paid for x number of games, whether there are also fans present or not. The clubs are not out of the woods by any stretch of imagination. The ticket money will also cause quite a bit of hurt (which gets more severe the lower you climb down the leagues for obvious reasons).

My club hopes, that season ticket holders will waive their claim for a refund, and pledged to donate 19.10% of it to charity (1910 being the founding year of the club). The next step is, next seasons tickets. There the idea is, we will sell them in June, no idea if the games will take place regularly (with fans), but we work under the (unlikely) premise they do. Potential refunds will be handled accordingly.

[ants]

Would it make sense to rejig the order teams play each other, so teams within the same groups play first?  i.e. teams in the relegation zone playing the first games against other teams in the relegation zone, and the same for those fighting for the champions league spots.

The advantage of this is that after 4-5 games out of the 10, you might have teams which are clear relegated, clearly safe, clearly in Europe or clearly out of Europe.  Which means if some teams do get hit by coronavirus, you might be able to drop them out of proceedings, and you might have more clarity if you can't play all ~10 games.  Positions are based on points per game scored, so if say a mid-table team has to go into isolation, they don't necessarily lose their spot and there is less incentive to force sick players to play.  

It would also mean the most important games are played while the players are fresh.  Obviously the fact so many teams are still in the running for Europe or relegation is a headache.  

[A Horse Named Stranger]

And it's official, what a lot of people suspected can now be confirmed.

S. Kalou is dumb. I mean proper dumb, not just footballer dumb. More like J. Terry Chelsea FC kinda dumb. I mean, acting stupid is one thing, filming yourself while being stupid is another thing. Uploading the film on the internet despite being asked to delete it. Now we are talking. Or maybe I am being unjust here, maybe he was playing a clever long game, and know this was a bad idea, and figured this was a good way to get suspended.

Another reason why this football restart is such a bad idea. You have to rely on the dumbest jock  in the squad to act somewhat reasonable and insightful. So, thus far we have Kyle Walker partying hard with two female entrepreneurs in the social service sector. And Kalou treating the hygiene concept of the league rather lightheartedly. Not even talking about the application of the concept by the self-proclaimed Big City Club.

[ants]

This is nothing compared to what Australian rugby and Australian Rules Football players have got up to. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

And top two tiers of German football to resume play next week.

I still don't think that this is gonna end well. But hey, first two matchdays on free TV.

[Raja]

Honestly, gonna watch every bit of the Bundesliga that I can

[BigFatCoward]

Coutinho is never coming to Newcastle, I dont care how much we throw at him. 

[ljkeane]

There's live Korean football on the BBC website! Some live sport, yes!

[A Horse Named Stranger]

12 hours ago, Raja said:

Honestly, gonna watch every bit of the Bundesliga that I can

First two games or so will be proper shit tho.

Some teams have just restarted proper team training. Thus the players won't be match fit for the restart (where would they get match fitness?). This will be pre-season quality games with points on the line. I have my money on 60-70 mins before they run out of gas and are just playing on reserve. Like I said before, the deeper the squad, the better. Hey but at least this way Bundesliga gets wrapped up before July, if everything goes according to the plan.

3 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Coutinho is never coming to Newcastle, I dont care how much we throw at him. 

Supply and demand. I think Coutinho's option are fairly limited. Bayern don't want him, Barca are not that keen to have him return either. He was linked to the two London clubs (Spurs and Chelski) before the corona lockdown. Let's see who has the money to sign him.

[Raja]

14 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

First two games or so will be proper shit tho.

I've been watching the Belarus league on twitch, I think I'll be able to cope

[Raja]

3 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Coutinho is never coming to Newcastle, I dont care how much we throw at him. 

Would look nice in the newcastle jersey though

[baxus]

3 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Coutinho is never coming to Newcastle, I dont care how much we throw at him. 

I don't think it would be that far-fetched. As already said, he's in a bit of a limbo right now with neither Bayern nor Barca wanting him at his current price. Newcastle might be just what he needs - a club willing to throw insane amounts of money on him and build everything around him so that he can impress and move on in a season or two.

Obviously, he's not going to come to a team just a bit above those in relegation battle but with some more signings to improve the squad enough to push them in the top half I can see Coutinho signing as well. I mean, can you imagine how much his stock would rise if he was a key player in gettting Newcastle to Europe? By then he'd be in his early thirties but he would still be in very high demand.