The week ahead in the Premier League Project Restart

There’s a few key things happening this week in the Premier League Project Restart.  We outline them here with some thoughts on what could occur

The week ahead in the Premier League Project Restart

Basic Background

To finish the season there have been 3 key dates put forward:

Full training commences – May 19 (now started)
Games commence – June 12 (likely to be June 26 now)
League completes – end of July (likely to be Mid August)

The week ahead

Here’s a quite handy time table from the Sky Sports Premier League site:

Monday (just gone): Next twice-weekly round of COVID-19 testing begins, continuing into Tuesday, with results expected on Wednesday.

Tuesday (today): Premier League will discuss updated government advice on contact training with club captains, managers and representatives from PFA and LMA.

Wednesday: Premier League clubs will vote on whether to resume contact training.

Thursday: Clubs meet again to discuss broader details of Project Restart – including how curtailment of the season would look.

Contact training

The Premier league has received Government approval for contact training to go ahead.  On Tuesday there will be a consultation on with players and managers and on Wednesday the clubs will vote on the protocols.  The issue over how positive tested players will affect others in terms of isolation will be a key discussion point.

Other matters for Thursday

Other factors to be discussed on the Thursday could be the fixture list.  That has been mooted as being in it’s original order from GW30 with the postponed matches of Man City v Arsenal and Villa v Sheffield being up in the first gameweek so everyone has the same number of matches remaining.  However that remains to be seen.

June 26 seems to be the likely consensus for when the season will restart.

Thursday could also see further discussions on the home and away matches decision.

May 25 UEFA deadline  

May 25th was the UEFA deadline for leagues to decide on whether to go ahead.   That seems to have past without any significant feedback in relation to the Premier League.

The Bundesliga continues and other European Leagues

The Bundesliga continues without many any major hitches.

La Liga clubs have started training on May 18 with a planned return on June 12 for matches still on the cards.  Spain generally is talking of tourists returning in July.

A decision on the Serie A season is expected on Thursday, with the campaign having been suspended since March due to COVID-19.

France’s Ligue 1 has been cancelled by Government order with PSG awarded the title.

No more mention of any player quarantine

Aaron Ramsdale testing positive from going to the Supermarket or filling up his car just makes my point about a quarantine being required.  The Bundesliga had a 14 day quarantine at least before the first gameweek and this has been mooted for the Premier League.  I’ve yet to see any mention again of it as a requirement but to me it would make a huge amount of sense.  Personally I think they should have been quarantined at least 14 days before any contact training but who am I.

I’ll update again after Thursday

I’ll catch up on the news from the week after feedback has been received on the Thursday meeting

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