SaintBobby

I might start following a German team. Looks like the Bundesliga is restarting soon. Spain too? Apparently, back in Blightly, we might need to accept that we can't even play next season in any proper way. Or rewrite the rules about it. Or something. Gees. How the mighty have fallen.

Scrapping relegation would be ridiculous. Might as well just arrnage a handful of play-off matches to resolve the Euro slots somehow. I guess a compromise might be to reduce relegation to two slots rather than three (and have one extra team in the top flight next year)?

no special treatment at all is suggested. If you can run football and give a major financial boost to our NHS though, why not do so? I’d apply the same to the hypothetical family BBQs and small music concerts. If these things will cost the NHS £x but raise £5x, then let’s do it.

If you want to minimise total deaths as an absolute top priority, probably best to cancel football permanently - irrespective of coronavirus.

It's a question of difficult trade offs really. If restarting the season would make £500m, but ten people would get slightly ill, it's worth it. Obviously the tricky bit is calculating what the likely trade offs are at least as much as workign out if they are worth it.

I'm not so sure about that. I think it's a bit above 50-50 that they will complete the season, even if that delays the start of next season. Lockdown will probably start to ease after the bank holiday weekend and may ahve eased a lot by June or July.

Yep. I guess you would need to impose some sort of lockdown/isolation for the duration of the mini-season and thereafterwarsd too. Separate hotels and hotel rooms for each club and associated officials. Compulsory testing and isolation for all those involved for 7-14 days at the conclusion of the seson etc. My general point is that you obviosuly can't reduce the risks to zero, but you can reduce them very substnatially with sufficient resources and football is wealthy enough to provide these resources.

It's a fair point, but the finances available in football also allow them to pay substantial money to mitigate and lower the risks. I'm imagining the details, but you could see the circumstances/legal requirements being as follows: 1. All those not practising social distancing must have been tested (at full market rate) three times in the previous fortnight - only those testing continually negative can play. 2. All those involved on "the fieled of play" must be aged under 40. 3. All those involved must be tested twice in the week after the match (at full market rate) 4. Any individual or group wishing to run an event or match represents a potential drain on NHS resources, to this end the organisers of the event must pay to secure a licence, the cost of which is £50,000 per event/match and earmarked directly for the NHS budget. These rules could apply to anyone seeking special exemption, but I imagine it's unlikely that you would seek to clear these hurdles to play a small music venue or arrange a family BBQ. If you do, that's fine though. Football could, of course, easily meet the costs of complying.

Not at all sure about the veracity of the OP's info, but seems plausible to me they will complete the season in this sort of format. Sure, I get the argument that - on the face of it - it looks like favouritism for football, but there are some reasons to treat football differently to, say, reopening garden centres or clothes shops. 1. Footballers themselves are in an incredibly low risk category. Fatalities amongst fit and healthy 20-30 year olds are near zero. The risk of infection is real, but the consequences are less severe comapred to - say - hundreds of 70-year olds visting garden centres, 2. The finances of football mean non-completion of the season could be catastrophic for clubs - the state furlough scheme, for example, proably covers 80% of the wages of garden centre employees, but hardly scratches the wage bill for players at football clubs. 3. The financial upside of restarting the season could be huge - the global TV audiences for Premier League football (in the absence of any other major sport on TV and if large numbers of people are still in lockdown at home) could be enormous. Re-opening garden centres or pub with social distancing measures might see their revenues get to, say, 25% of normal. For football - depending on the TV rights package - you could imagine revenues being above normal. (Every single match televised at £10 PPV, for example). 4. I guess an argument could just about be made that it would be good for national morale, more so than reopening B&Q perhaps. There are still all sorts of problems - the unfairness of losing the Home-Away difference (probably helps Saints though!) etc. But there might be ways to mitigate this (maybe only relegate two teams this season, for example?)

Be surprised if anyone knows that without looking it up. Am going to guess it's around 25-30 (about 1 or 2 a year?)

Rickie Lambert? Or was that a beetroot-packing factory?

Yep...Our first of many rubbish record signings!

Who was Southampton’s first £1m signing?

Dark red and gold?

Henri Camara?

Dexter Blackstock? Although he's quite tall. Or is it not a trick question?

Tadic?

Steve D?

12 minutes? He came on as a sub at half time?

57 minutes?

Kevin Phillips?

Yep

Well. I'll end the torment and pose an alternative ( the answer btw was Gardos). Which Saints player (i.e. at Southampton at the time) was the last to score a World Cup (in the finals, not qualifiers) goal which was decisive in determining the outcome of that match?

nope. you're all wrong.

Nope. Guys - it’s going to be a low number. Can you really imagine us fielding a team in which none of the players from, say, 1 - 15 start the match?