The Premier League clubs are holding a meeting today to discuss the Xmas period schedule of fixtures and may demand that at least one of the three programmes of Premier League fixtures be postponed, but it will be money that will ultimately decide it.
Six of the 10 Premier League fixtures over the weekend were postponed because of Covid 19 and the average football supporter will be asking why some football club squads have higher rates of infection than others and indeed higher than the population in general.
Ralph Hasenhuttl has spoken of how he has worked hard to encourage his players to be fully vaccinated and that the Southampton squad with a near 100% fully vaccinated have had few cases of Covid this season.
Indeed it was revealed that in the English Football League around 25% of the players have refused any form of vaccination for various reasons.
Back to the question that fans are asking, how can Premier League football squads with their high level of medical supervision, sterile training grounds and the Red area's at the stadiums themselves that isolate them from the fans and even staff to protect them further.
On Saturday 98.000 people tested positive for Covid, that is about 0.15% of the population, yet on the same day Aston Villa for example had 6 players testing positive, in simple terms around 25% of their squad.
OK you could argue that the figures for the country are lower than the actual real number as many may be positive without symptoms and not tested themselves, but even if we multiplied that number by 10 it would still only be 1.5% of the population.
So what are Premier League footballers doing different to the rest of us that they are more susceptible to the virus than the average man in the street ?
The Premier League clubs are meeting today and are likely to call for a postponement of fixtures over the festive period, but even they are not so stupid to think they can get all three matches postponed, but they are looking for at least the middle round of games between 28th to 30th December to be scratched from the fixture list until later in the season.
But even that will be a tough ask and the reason why is that money talks, the bigger clubs can afford to take a hit, when each club had to repay a big chunk of the TV money last year, the likes of Manchester City literally took it out of the petty cash tin.
The Premier League position is that it intends to continue its current fixture schedule where safely possible but insist the health and wellbeing of all concerned remains its priority.
However Amazon has the whole round of matches between December 28-30 scheduled for broadcast and they are said to have paid £30million-a-season to exclusively show two rounds of top flight matches.
This is a drop in the ocean in the grand scheme of things, hence the big clubs feel they can push home the point.
With most managers in the Premier League these days being from abroad, they often express amazement that we play such a heave Xmas schedule when on the Continent for example some countries have breaks over that period.
Media sources suggest that Premier League managers are united in their desire to get at least one round of the three scheduled postponed and are pushing their Chairman to lobby for this at today's meeting.
The meeting is due to take place today at 1pm and given the fact that the Government is under pressure to increase Covid restrictions and will likely do so after Xmas Day, the club's will feel they are in a strong position, given that it could be that spectators might not be allowed into these fixtures anyway.
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