Gary Neville has added his voice to calls for the Premier League to stop postponing matches because of covid outbreaks.
Arsenal’s match against Wolves has been called off because their opponents do not have enough players to fulfil the fixture, with some of their players getting infected with the disease.
No one knows how long this will go on, but one obvious thing is that there might be trouble rescheduling these matches next year.
TalkSport’s Adrian Durham criticised matches getting postponed on Twitter and former United man, Neville supported him as quoted by the Mail.
“Completely agree Adrian . No way these clubs can’t get a team out. We’ve seen in the PL when teams requests are rejected they end up playing near on full strength line ups . Time for clubs to get on with it and trust their young players unless in exceptional circumstances.”
Just Arsenal Opinion
Arsenal had to play some of their first matches of the season with a depleted team and the likes of Folarin Balogun were handed starts.
It didn’t turn out so well, but at least our game against Brentford wasn’t called off and we have continued our season from that poor start.
The Premier League needs to make it harder for clubs to get matches postponed, and this period might be a good time to give chances to youngsters across the country.
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Neville and I hate to admit, Durham are justified in their crtiticsm of the Premier League in their failure to extend player pools during the latest outbreak.Far from having a detrimental impact, it could make the careers of a number of youngsters who would never get an opportunity to perform in normal circumstances.
Correct Grandad, not through covid but through injury, we have had youngsters (ESR, Martinelli, Lakonga and Tavares) get in and show how good they are when put in. Plus to a lesser extent Patino has been pushed up to the first team squad earlier than expected.
Apparently Patino only made the squad against Sunderland after Chambers tested positive. Really glad he took his chance!
Thats right Sue, injuries and covid got him his chance a long way ahead of schedule.
I have said it before in an identical article under a different pundit, teams squads are there and should be used. It might not turn out equally advantageous for all but all will be utilising their squads on a equal basis. Players need to play and probably some could actually surprise given the opportunity.
Adrian Durham and talksport 🤢
Regarding the postponements of games I believe some teams have bent the rules .
A team last week had 5 positive covid tests which from what rules I read should have been able to field a team ,as that left them with 20 first team players ,so unless I read the covid rules wrong I’m not sure what’s going on .
Problem being is that cases are going to rise probably for the next 4 weeks so until there is a downturn in positive cases I can not see how games are not going to get postponed .