Premier League 2020/21 - General Chat

[Stan]

3 hours ago, Bluewolf said:

having said that I am not sure what the situation will be regarding season tickets???

Can't see fans forking out shitloads when they can't even get to go see the games but either way with a lack of games being available to watch live even for a small charge and loss of ticket sales that's a lot of potential revenue they are missing out on... 

We fucked up at Leicester and the club reversed their original decision to have a £70 initial payment just to secure your season ticket not only for this season but for next season too. Without seemingly taking in to account those that didn't want to go this year and therefore not fork out a cost for it but also at the risk of losing their season ticket for 21/22. But they did reverse it kind of so that the £70 goes towards 21/22 only of there are no full capacity games this season. 

And if you do get a chance to go this season, you won't get to sit in your own seat and you'll have to pay full price for the seat you sit in (which could be up to £20-30 more expensive in some parts of the ground. 

[Lucas]

8 hours ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

Seeing Leeds back in the league gives me such a rush of nostalgia. And then I remember that’s our first match.

I missed them and their bastard fans. Can’t wait to see them back, hope they very comfortably avoid the drop but I’ll settle with them scraping by if necessary.

Still hope we get 6 points from them but I’m so glad they’re back.

It's weird, we really are flavour of the month since we officially got promoted. Be it Sky, BBC, Radio 5, Talksport etc, lots of Leeds chat, completely ignored West Brom and Fulham, you wouldn't know they came up as well.

Not used to all this after years of abuse and finger pointing

Just a shame the fans (which are synonymous with us) aren't there. I'm hoping we do enough to survive so that next season we can go back to full crowds. Fingers crossed.

[Dan+]

8 hours ago, Harvsky said:

It seems Sky, BT and the Premier League think they can get away with not televising all games by making sure every game of Liverpool, Man Utd, Arsenal and Chelsea is on.

They've had the cheek to tell supporters of other clubs to tune into the radio.

12 days to go and funnily enough it looks like Newcastle fans will have to watch the game on illegal streams of BeIN sports.

Sort it out ffs.

Hopefully this episode makes it hit home the contempt football in general has for the fans.

[Dan+]

7 hours ago, Bluewolf said:

Pretty piss poor that especially under the current circumstances... 

The very least they could do is offer free viewing to season ticket holders and a low cost version to all other fans... having said that I am not sure what the situation will be regarding season tickets???

Can't see fans forking out shitloads when they can't even get to go see the games but either way with a lack of games being available to watch live even for a small charge and loss of ticket sales that's a lot of potential revenue they are missing out on... 

Stan explained ours. I'm in a tricky position as I've got a strong priority at Leicester so I'm probably going to end up paying it, but I won't be attending games until they're being done properly again. Can hand on heart say I'd sooner watch on TV than attend with a load of restrictions.

[MUFC]

https://onefootball.com/en/news/glazers-agree-to-sell-man-united-to-ortega-family-reports-from-spain-claim-30885217

?

[Honey Honey]

Government now pressuring the corrupt Premier League to have all games televised. Just putting Man Utd on isn't enough.

[Stan]

Quote

 

The Premier League has terminated its £564m contract with its Chinese licensee with immediate effect.

China was the English top flight's most lucrative overseas television rights territory, with a three-season deal agreed in 2019.

It is understood the reasons for the termination are financial rather than political.

BBC Sport has been told streaming service PPTV withheld its latest payment of £160m, due in March.

In a statement on Thursday, the Premier League said: "The Premier League confirms that it has today terminated its agreements for Premier League coverage in China with its licensee in that territory.

"The Premier League will not be commenting further on the matter at this stage."

PPTV is owned by Suning Holdings, the Chinese group which also has a controlling stake in Serie A side Inter Milan.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/54014827

[Dr. Gonzo]

No more 5 subs for the rest of this season. I think we should expect English sides to either be shit in Europe... or to do what Klopp does with the domestic cups and "disrespect" them.

[Stan]

Just now, Dr. Gonzo said:

No more 5 subs for the rest of this season. I think we should expect English sides to either be shit in Europe... or to do what Klopp does with the domestic cups and "disrespect" them.

Good.

Glad that rule has gone. Only favours the bigger clubs with bigger talent across squads. No surprise it was the 'top six' (plus Brighton?!) voting for it and pushing another vote through. Glad they were out-voted.

[Dr. Gonzo]

Just now, Stan said:

Good.

Glad that rule has gone. Only favours the bigger clubs with bigger talent across squads. No surprise it was the 'top six' (plus Brighton?!) voting for it and pushing another vote through. Glad they were out-voted.

Gives all the clubs in Europe a pretty big disadvantage though. Probably doesn't impact Leicester though because Rodgers' is likely to play the backups in Europe, the silly fucker. I think treating this upcoming season like it's a normal season where there's no pandemic might be a bit of a mistake come December when clubs are riddled with injuries.

At the end of the day, when squads are depleted because players haven't had a proper break with a proper pre-season and they're riddled with injury... it's the richer clubs that'll still be better off than the normal clubs. If DeBrunye goes down, there's Mahrez or the Silva to take his spot. If Grealish goes down, Villa are in that weird position where they've not really got anyone to replace him.

For us it's irritating as it's unlikely that the FA will allow us to back out of the League Cup or FA Cup... so as much as I'd want us to go for the FA Cup this season, the arseholes at FIFA decided to expand the CWC for 2021 so that Liverpool and Real Madrid will have to participate in the stupid fucking tournament and have more matches to play. FIFA's not going to let us withdraw either, so while a domestic cup run might have been nice... I fully expect us to try to go out of these domestic cups ASAP. In fact, I'd be a bit annoyed if we didn't "disrespect" the cups this year.

[Dan+]

5 subs was just another metric to help the bigger clubs. Glad common sense won, and funny how they had to vote again, almost like there's an agenda.

[Honey Honey]

1 week to go and still no deal to show all games. Will the dodgy streams be able to cope with the volume of traffic.

[Smiley Culture]

Five subs should have remained for this coming season and possibly 21/22, too, given the amount of games players are expected to play between August 19 and the Qatar World Cup. 

[LFCMadLad]

4 hours ago, Smiley Culture said:

Five subs should have remained for this coming season and possibly 21/22, too, given the amount of games players are expected to play between August 19 and the Qatar World Cup. 

It hands too much of an advantage to the top clubs mate. The top four etc can replace 5 quality players with 5 quality players. The rest cant. 

[ScoRoss]

Quote

Complicated contracts, ticket sales, Match Of The Day, escaped genies, overseas broadcasters, Pandora and her box… like a game of Cluedo, there is no shortage of possible culprits, but how the Premier League has got to within a few days of starting a new season without a plan for letting its best customers watch the games legally remains a mystery.

What we do know is that, three weeks after Premier League chief executive Richard Masters was told fans were united in their belief that all of next season’s games should, at least, be streamed so that locked-out season ticket holders can see them, the clubs will meet early next week to do something the English Football League managed with little fanfare or fuss last month.

It will not be the football-for-all buffet fans enjoyed when play resumed in June to complete 2019-20 but it should be, as the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters Trust co-chair Kat Law puts it, “better than nothing”.

To avoid what would be a spectacular customer-service own goal, the league will have to do better than the press release it issued on August 20, a day after Masters’ meeting with representatives from the Football Supporters’ Association and five supporters trusts.

Having heard that access to broadcasts or streams of every game played behind closed doors or in front of a reduced capacity was a priority for fans at every club, the league announced its 2020-21 fixtures in a statement that came across as a tad tin-eared to many.

The main points were the season would start on September 12 and conclude on May 23, Liverpool will begin their title defence against the champions of the Championship, Leeds United, the four teams that took part in European competition in August would have later starts, oh, and because the “truncated” season has two fewer weekends than usual, the three main broadcasters get 20 games extra to share to take their cumulative total to 220.

There was no reference, however, to the other 160 games, 42 per cent of the total, that will not be picked up by Sky, BT or Amazon — matches no fans will be able to attend until October at the earliest, and only after that in reduced numbers until a cure or a vaccine for COVID-19 is available.

The statement summed up the situation in two sentences.

“The 2020-21 season will begin behind closed doors. The Premier League is committed to getting fans back into full stadia as soon as possible, with safety always being the priority.”

Six days later, the FSA launched its #LetUsWatch campaign, with every club’s main supporters group joining in on social media and Ian Mearns, MP for Gateshead and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Football Supporters, chipping in with an open letter to Masters.

Having started by praising the league for its “pragmatic approach” to access during Project Restart, which included giving the BBC its first ever live Premier League games to broadcast, Mearns wrote: “With social distancing looking set to stay for some time… I’m extremely disappointed to learn the broadcasting arrangements seem set to return to normal for the coming season.”

Newcastle United fan Mearns wrote this would mean many fans will not be able to attend or even watch games because they missed out on the ballot for a seat in a reduced-capacity ground, or cannot go because they are more vulnerable to COVID, and their match has simply not been picked by one of the broadcasters.

“It would seem the only countries where you would not be able to watch your team play every game for the coming season are North Korea, Saudi Arabia and the UK,” he added, before urging the league to “listen to supporters, reconsider your position, and come back with new proposals”.

At a minimum, the FSA wants season-ticket holders to be given access to streams of any home fixtures they cannot attend while games are behind closed doors. But that really would be at the bottom end of fans’ expectations, with most wanting universal access to streams for all games this season, as none are likely to be played in front of a full house.

Law, a member of the FSA’s national council and an experienced campaigner on broadcasting issues, makes the case for why very temporary access to streams of the league’s international broadcast feed, something all the league’s clubs could provide via their own websites, would not be good enough.

“We are in danger of forgetting the fact that some loyal fans will not be able to go to games, because they’re shielding for one reason or another,” says Law. “Are we just going to dismiss them? That’s why we should be thinking about a solution for all the games until all the fans can return.”

Nobody is suggesting this should be free but there does appear to be very few Premier League fans talking about the difficulty of putting genies back in bottles or toothpaste back in tubes when it comes to creating an expectation that all matches, even on Saturday afternoons, should be available to watch. That would normally be a step too far for the FSA.

The further you go down the pyramid, the stronger the support is for something many Premier League fans believe is an anachronism, the Saturday afternoon blackout, and the FSA is a broad church which represents all clubs in England and Wales. Brought in by European football’s governing body UEFA to protect match-day revenues from television, the blackout is now only observed in England, Montenegro and Scotland.

The FSA, however, backed the rule’s suspension during Project Restart, as it was clearly the only way fans were going to be able to watch their teams, and it has maintained that stance for this season, as a campaign played out in front of quarter-full stadiums is far from normal service.

“The Premier League rightly highlights the passion and loyalty of match-going fans in its marketing, and you can’t just turn that on and off,” an FSA spokesman explains.

“If games are going to be played behind closed doors, or in front of hugely reduced crowds, then extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures and you have to give those supporters real options.

“It’s not in anyone’s interests to put match-going fans in such a position where they have no legal way to watch their side’s matches live. Yet hundreds of thousands of supporters will find themselves in this position, including fans who haven’t missed games in decades. The Premier League and broadcasters have to find a solution and find it quickly.”

But when The Athletic called clubs for comment on Friday, one official sounded more like the FSA than the FSA did.

“How have we not sorted this out before?” he asks. “What kind of way is this to treat our most loyal fans? It’s embarrassing for the industry and it’s taken normal people to put us right.”

Those normal people include the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

Six hours after the FSA launched its campaign, that government department released a statement reiterating its support for football’s efforts to get fans back in grounds as quickly as possible but making its feelings on what should happen until then very clear.

“It is for the Premier League and its broadcast partners to come to an agreement on screening matches,” it says. “However, we urge them to follow the spirit of Project Restart and listen to clubs’ loyal fans and consider what can be achieved in the meantime.”

That statement arrived on the eve of the next Premier League shareholders’ meeting, a gathering of the bosses of its 20 clubs. There are normally five of these per season but there has been more to talk about than usual, so this was the 12th meeting already this year. As with most of the previous 11, it was dominated by media rights.

Item one on the agenda was a vote on what to do about the league’s Chinese partner, PP Sports.

Owned by retail giant Suning, PP Sports shelled out £527 million for the Premier League’s live rights in mainland China for 2019-22. The partnership was agreed in late 2016 but not officially launched until a party at Suning’s Bellagio Hotel in Shanghai on the eve of the Premier League’s Asia Trophy pre-season tournament in July of last year.

PP Sports paid big — about 12 times the amount the same rights cost in the previous cycle — at a time when the Chinese football and streaming industries were running hot but, as of this week, the company was six months late with a payment of £160 million.

The firm had tried to renegotiate the league’s most lucrative overseas deal, hoping to use the pandemic as a “force majeure” event, but with the clubs already looking at COVID-related losses of at least £500 million, there was no appetite on the video conference call for doing so and the vote was unanimous: terminate. Within an hour of the league’s press release being sent, the Chinese firm pushed out its own statement saying it had cancelled the contract.

The league’s broadcast team now have a week to find a new partner or 1.3 billion people will join Mearns’ list of the unfortunates around the globe with no legal means of watching when Chinese-owned Southampton go to Crystal Palace next Saturday, or Wolverhampton Wanderers, another Chinese enterprise, visit Sheffield United two days later.

There is confidence at Premier League HQ that this should not be beyond them and they have dismissed suggestions that PP Sports’ withheld payment was related to a growing frostiness in UK/China relations. The broadcast team will be busy, though, as they were then asked by the shareholders to come up with options to address the #LetUsWatch challenge.

As mentioned, it is believed these options will be based on the “flexible package” the EFL announced more than a fortnight ago. So often second fiddle in English football, the EFL was able to take such decisive and painless action because it has, in effect, been a broadcaster in its own right since 2017, when it launched its iFollow streaming service.

Though designed initially just for overseas fans, who can still watch any game they are willing to pay for, British supporters have been able to stream midweek EFL games not selected for broadcast by Sky Sports since the start of the 2018-19 season.

The domestic offering was extended to all games when play resumed in June. Season-ticket holders were given access codes by their clubs as compensation, while less regular fans were able to buy an individual match pass for £10.

Several EFL clubs have opted out of iFollow in favour of their own bespoke offering, but the same principles apply — season-ticket holders get access to all home games and those without tickets will be able to stream any game not shown live by Sky for a tenner. The league, however, has stressed these measures are “temporary” and will only be in place while clubs must operate their stadiums at zero or reduced capacity, with the latter being a matter for review.

Whether the Premier League deal should be quite so accessible is a matter of debate, with some sources suggesting the top-flight offer might only apply to season-ticket holders, and perhaps just for as long as the stadiums are empty.

While it will upset those supporters who rely on membership schemes, reselling sites and general sales to pick up as many tickets as they can get their hands on, the rationale for limiting streaming access to season-ticket holders is at least rational in that fans without a Sky subscription — and Sky has the rights to 140 of the 220 live games — can get a Sky Sports day pass via Now TV for a one-off payment of £9.99.  It is also perhaps not an accident that all of the ‘big six’ clubs’ games in September have been picked by the broadcasters.

Now TV passes will not help those who follow one of the 14 other clubs so much, though. For supporters of those sides, there will be a very real temptation to do what one supporters’ group source described as “breaking the seal” on a world of dodgy feeds and firesticks.

“We’ll be putting people who would never have been interested in watching an illegal stream in a very difficult position,” he adds.

But what annoys him and so many others The Athletic has spoken to over the last few weeks is that nobody has explained why this has been so hard for the Premier League to do, or even talk about.

Various theories have been suggested — the overseas contracts limit the number of games that can be streamed elsewhere, the clubs want more money from domestic broadcasters for streaming rights, some clubs are worried about making it too easy for fans to stay at home, or the BBC objected because nobody would watch their Match Of The Day highlights — but most have been shot down by one source or several.

Perhaps we should not be surprised by this lack of consensus. After all, the clubs are coming at this from such different starting points. Tottenham Hotspur, for example, with their £1 billion new stadium, are only thinking about how quickly they can fill it again. The 30 per cent capacity the rest of them are aiming for is not even Spurs chairman Daniel Levy’s starting point: he wants a test event with the ground half full. Streaming passes are some way down his list of priorities.

They might not be very high up promoted Fulham’s either, as they have not even tried to sell any season tickets yet, largely because they are down to three sides while the Riverside Stand at Craven Cottage is transformed and they have no idea how many fans they will be allowed to fit in the rest of the stadium. But they are probably more of an issue at Everton, where they have sold 31,000 season tickets for 39,000-capacity Goodison Park — another cramped, old-fashioned ground that will struggle with social distancing.

But the two theories about the league’s dilly-dallying that have been most resilient are also the hardest to pin down.

The first can be summarised as a general uneasiness about upsetting the companies, particularly Sky, that have underwritten the Premier League’s almost 30-year success story. Several club sources have made the point that the broadcasters pay good money for the rights and those rights are only valuable when they are exclusive.

When viewed in that light, the great giveaway of Project Restart was a magnanimous gesture on the part of the domestic broadcasters, again, particularly Sky, which put the 20 extra games it was given on a free-to-air channel.

The idea that streaming could “open Pandora’s box” is something several sources said, without ever really defining. And the same phrase of ominous foreboding was used for the second most-cited theory: nobody wants to talk about streaming because everyone is thinking about streaming. The broadcasters, the clubs and the league all know the rights model that has served the game and the media companies so well since 1992 is on borrowed time.

Dr Jonathan Cable is a lecturer at the University of Gloucestershire’s School of Media and has written extensively about sports broadcasting.

“Part of it will be the Premier League’s collective bargaining and clubs at the lower end not wanting the top six to hoover up all the TV money, like in Spain,” says Cable. “Imagine the revenue to be made if Manchester United and Liverpool could show their own games on an in-house subscription channel?

“American sports have shown how it can be done. The size of US and how games are shown on TV does make local streaming blackouts easier, but the model exists and it’s relatively cheap for the consumer.

“The reason the league hasn’t embraced streaming sooner is that the broadcast gravy train, although slowing in recent years, is still a massive moneymaker. COVID-19 and political tension, as we’ve seen with China and the Middle East, is threateningly to derail it all. There are big decisions waiting to be made!”

 

[Smiley Culture]

1 hour ago, LFCMadLad said:

It hands too much of an advantage to the top clubs mate. The top four etc can replace 5 quality players with 5 quality players. The rest cant. 

The rest can’t replace three quality players with three quality players under the old rules. They couldn’t replace one quality player with one quality player when it was only one sub allowed. It’s just natural opposition to change, which is absolutely rife in football as football fans are averse to any change.

I don’t think the welfare of players, considering the fact many will have had barely a couple of weeks off after having next to no “pre-season” type training upon the resumption of team’s being allowed to train and the return of the Premier League and ahead of a season that’s not had any serious amendments to it (eg suspension of the League Cup, suspension of the 20/21 Nations League etc), you’re likely to see more injuries to players and a lower overall quality to the league, while risking that UEFA’s major tournament has some of its big names either missing completely, completely knackered and/or completely off the pace. The ramifications of a weakening of the product for both the Premier League and UEFA are pretty large. 

You’re also going to have a number of players from at least one of the major European nations (France, Germany, Spain, England, Portugal, Italy, Holland etc) having gone far in the Euros and the cycle will continue and players will have very little time off ahead of the 21/22 season, before an even more disjointed 22/23 season that is going to be crapped on by the Qatar World Cup. 

We all want to see the big name players as much as possible but this is going to hinder them, not help them, IMO. 

[Dr. Gonzo]

On 06/09/2020 at 06:23, Smiley Culture said:

The rest can’t replace three quality players with three quality players under the old rules. They couldn’t replace one quality player with one quality player when it was only one sub allowed. It’s just natural opposition to change, which is absolutely rife in football as football fans are averse to any change.

I don’t think the welfare of players, considering the fact many will have had barely a couple of weeks off after having next to no “pre-season” type training upon the resumption of team’s being allowed to train and the return of the Premier League and ahead of a season that’s not had any serious amendments to it (eg suspension of the League Cup, suspension of the 20/21 Nations League etc), you’re likely to see more injuries to players and a lower overall quality to the league, while risking that UEFA’s major tournament has some of its big names either missing completely, completely knackered and/or completely off the pace. The ramifications of a weakening of the product for both the Premier League and UEFA are pretty large. 

You’re also going to have a number of players from at least one of the major European nations (France, Germany, Spain, England, Portugal, Italy, Holland etc) having gone far in the Euros and the cycle will continue and players will have very little time off ahead of the 21/22 season, before an even more disjointed 22/23 season that is going to be crapped on by the Qatar World Cup. 

We all want to see the big name players as much as possible but this is going to hinder them, not help them, IMO. 

Well said. There already isn’t much parity in football - City can rest 10 outfield players and still put out an XI that’ll beat most sides in the league.

With the amount of football being played over the next year (or two, considering we’ve got that silly Qatar World Cup) there are so many games and the sides that are going to be most disadvantaged by good players getting bad injuries from being overplayed... are going to be the smaller clubs that already don’t have depth. And for Villa, losing someone like Grealish for the last 10 minutes of a few matches in December to throw on someone nowhere near as good, or give a kid a cameo, or whatever is better for Villa than if they lose him for 10 matches or 10 months due to injury.

[Stan]

All games for September to be aired live on TV. 

 

[Stan]

Saturday 12 September

12:30 Fulham v Arsenal (BT Sport)

15:00 Crystal Palace v Southampton (BT Sport)

17:30 Liverpool v Leeds (Sky Sports)

20:00 West Ham v Newcastle (Pick)

 

Sunday 13 September

14:00 West Brom v Leicester (Sky Sports)

16:30 Spurs v Everton (Sky Sports)

 

Monday 14 September

18:00 Sheffield Utd v Wolves (Pick)

20:15 Brighton v Chelsea (Sky Sports)

 

Saturday 19 September

12:30 Everton v West Brom (BT Sport)

15:00 Leeds v Fulham (BT Sport)

17:30 Man Utd v Crystal Palace (Sky Sports)

20:00 Arsenal v West Ham (Sky Sports)

 

Sunday 20 September

12:00 Southampton v Spurs (BT Sport)

14:00 Newcastle v Brighton (Pick)

16:30 Chelsea v Liverpool (Sky Sports)

19:00 Leicester v Burnley (BBC Sport)

 

Monday 21 September

18:00 Aston Villa v Sheffield Utd (Pick)

20:15 Wolves v Man City (Sky Sports)

 

Confirmation of broadcast selections for the final 10 fixtures in September will follow imminently.

[Honey Honey]

Better late than never.

[Lucas]

All we need now is some match threads to discuss these games and we're laughing.

[Stan]

3 minutes ago, Lucas said:

All we need now is some match threads to discuss these games and we're laughing.

They're coming, chill. 

[Lucas]

1 minute ago, Stan said:

They're coming, chill. 

Chill? Chill?

Some of us have been waiting 16 years for this 

[Stan]

Just now, Lucas said:

Chill? Chill?

Some of us have been waiting 16 years for this 

A bit longer won't harm then  

[SchalkeUK]

Surprising how transport of players and teams have changed during this covid period.  I went with a young friend to watch him play last evening before he starts school again today.  He played well, but was full of his exciting day when - despite playing in Denmark the night before - my young friend sat next to and got a selfie for his school notice board with one Kalvin Phillips having his hair sorted.  What a way for a kid to start a new school year - new haircut and a pic with one of his idols! Apparently very happy to let him do it - one nice tick for Mr Phillips.