Jimmy_D

47/48, although I'm not sure how many of those were cup games. The one he missed was a league game though. There are bound to be a few players on a smaller number of penalties with 100% I'd imagine, but Le Tissier's record was so far above what he'd have been expected to get on average, it was silly.

Lambert is the only England player to have scored with his very first touch for England, achieved while he was a Saint. First LED floodlit stadium. Only team to have caused an opponent to change shirt colours at half time. We're the only team to have won by four or more goals in the South Coast Derby. Most likely team for Mark Lawrenson to get his prediction wrong on (probably!) Does anyone have a better top flight penalty record than Le Tissier?

That goes back around to whether they think that Liverpool winning the league would cause the public to gather in Liverpool and how much strain the spike from that would put on the NHS.

If it's safe, sure, but that's very unlikely. Government estimates (assuming a fair few unknowns) put us at about three to six months before we might be back to normal, which would be the end of June at the earliest. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52084517 I guess football could be one of the earlier things to come back, but like I said, preventing crowds forming is going to be paramount for a long time.

You don't have to actually officially void the league to avoid restarting it too soon. Whichever actions prevent crowds forming are the correct ones at the moment, and will continue to be for the foreseeable.

To be fair, the messaging from the press has been consistent on how important the measures put in place are.

It's not the footballers that will be the problem, it'll be the response of the public that'll be the concern. Can you really see Liverpool fans sitting at home and staying isolated when they win their first title for three decades? In Italy they're literally taking ventilators away from older patients to save younger ones that are more likely to survive. It's a horrible, horrible situation, from people's absolute worst nightmares, made real, and the only reason it's happening is because it's the least horrible option. People are dying not because of the tragedy of not being able to overcome the virus, but because there's no treatment available because too many people are sick. Here we might just about have done enough to avoid that. Maybe. And it'll all have been for nothing if we let up too soon and end up with a second peak that pushes us above capacity to treat it. This goes so far beyond football... it's not something we can treat lightly in any way, shape or form.

The best outcome, purely from a footballing point of view, is for the season to finish before contracts run out. For obvious reasons that's extremely unlikely to happen. Personally I think the season will eventually end up voided due to the issue of contracts ending at the end of June preventing the season from ending fairly. It's possible they'll decide that finishing the season later is preferable to voiding it, whenever that happens to be, but imagine one of the teams in the relegation mix goes out and buys a load of players and escapes. If you prevent any players signing until the season finishes, you still can't force players to carry on that are out of contract, or finishing loans, which also distorts the finish. Purely from a competition point of view, the only option I can see to finish fairly is to cancel it, otherwise you have to change the rules and/or players that teams started the season with outside of what was agreed at the start. As far as I can see, it's only the money in the game posing an existential threat to leagues and clubs, that's pushing people towards wanting to compromise on the sporting integrity. To be able to finish the season and apply qualification and promotion/relegation etc. All of this is completely separate from next season, which we can go into with full knowledge of the existence of COVID-19 and adjust the rules to be able to cope with possible delays etc. Obviously Liverpool are the biggest losers in that scenario, and it's difficult to think of a team that would have been treated more harshly than them missing out like this, but literally every aspect of our life has been knocked sideways by a global pandemic, and there's no way to keep everyone happy with the outcome here. Obviously it's not time to say that the season should be voided now, as long as there's still a small possibility the season can be ended fairly, but as time carries on I think it'll become more and more likely. Starting to look more unlikely the Scottish League will finish, for what it's worth; https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/52092857

That really was an awesome day for us

Aye, we were starting the process of dismantling the Empire anyway, but it was WWII that probably finished it off. http://www.wikipedia.org/British_Empire_in_World_War_II Our economy still feels the effect of WWII even now.

Still doesn’t work due to relegated teams. For example, an unplayed match against Norwich is a very different prospect to an unplayed match against Leeds under Bielsa.

Watching football

It's not a magic money tree, it's borrowing against the future and tanking our future economy to save hundreds of thousands of lives now. We're going to be worse off for a long time once we get through this, but it's better than the alternative.

You don't have a fair allocation of points from this season to roll over though, due to relative strength of teams played etc.

To be fair footballers have gone from doing more exercise and spending more time outdoors in a week than most do in a year. On top of that they're in the privileged position of having no money worries, and a job that's going to wait for them. This also means that they don't need to leave the house, so the vast majority aren't because of the restrictions. Obviously these are very different problems and far less worrying for them than most have, but everyone and everything is being affected in some way by this, I'm not surprised a few are having to find ways to fill that gap.

Summary of UEFA Resolution agreed for International and Club teams continuing the season. https://www.uefa.com/insideuefa/mediaservices/mediareleases/newsid=2641077.html

https://www.uefa.com/insideuefa/mediaservices/mediareleases/newsid=2641077.html

Yeah, that makes sense, I mean suddenly having a huge number of people self isolating as much as possible couldn't possibly lead to increased load on communication networks.

https://www.football-espana.net/2020/03/17/uefa-to-inform-european-leagues-finish-fixtures-by-june Looks like another spanner getting chucked in the works there.

Aside from whether you'd be able to sell a player that can't play anywhere else, why should a team suffer not having a full strength team because the terms they started the season under have changed? Next season is a problem for next season, regardless of that there's no way of fairly ending this season.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166354220301145 https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTi-g18ftNZUMRAj2SwRPodtscFio7bJ7GdNgbJAGbdfF67WuRJB3ZsidgpidB2eocFHAVjIL-7deJ7/pub This sounds really promising, could massively reduce the impact we're looking at at the moment. TLDR: Existing anti-malaria drug that's cheap and easy to produce seems to be effective in both preventing and treating COVID-19, but it's too early to tell for sure just yet. IF it's effective it's considered safe, but relatively easy to overdose, so would require professional administration.

Have to admit, Saints being stuck in mid-table, relatively poor performances, and terrible home form this season are making it a little easier to deal with the lack of football. Not to mention that whichever decision is made about finishing the season isn't going to have much effect on Saints, apart from when we start playing football again. Teams with stuff to play for must have fans climbing the walls by now.

Continuing the season at the soonest point possible wouldn't be a level playing field either, due to contracts running out in the summer. Basically at this point there's no fair way to finish this season. As harsh as it is on Liverpool (and I'm struggling to think of a team that's faced something more harsh), voiding the season feels like it'd be the fairest outcome to me.

New advice is for everyone to self-isolate as much as possible. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51917562 The World is going to be a different place once we come out the other side of this.

Agents of SHIELD is worth a watch, especially if you're a fan of the MCU. It starts off a bit slow, but then gets progressively better and better, well worth sticking with.