Premier League Project Restart faces Clubs backslash
- Premier League has been planning resumption of games
- Part of the plans has been on hosting games in neutral venues
- Clubs are opposed to the idea of not playing in their stadiums
- Mental Health and Psychosocial considerations during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Premier League’s plan to have the 2019/20 football calendar is in jitters as Premier League clubs expressed their opposition to hosting of games in neutral venues.
At a meeting on Monday, various Premier League Chiefs expressed their opposition to the plan of having the games played out in neutral venues.
This placed Project Restart at a standstill as the Premier League can only move forward with their plans based on a unanimous decision by the entire league.
Among the clubs opposing the move to neutral venues include Aston Villa, Arsenal, Chelsea, Brighton, Tottenham and Watford.
A government directive posits that professional football will only be allowed back behind closed doors on June 1 on condition that the games are played in neutral venues with minimal risks of spreading the coronavirus.
On their part, clubs are said to be looking at sponsorship deals that the clubs are holding in contract.
A decision to move the games to neutral venues would mean that the clubs pay back the companies the millions shillings given to them in the sponsorship deals.
Bournemouth, Arsenal, Brighton, Leicester City, Newcastle United and Manchester City are the sides named after sponsors but sponsorship agreements extends to signage around the ground.
Pic- Norwich and Aston Villa are among clubs unhappy about playing matches at neutral venues
The news of the stand-off is likely to infuriate police chiefs after Martin Roberts, the head of the UK’s football police unit, told clubs opposing plans to play at neutral grounds to ‘get a grip’ last week.
He said:
We need to temper things. When you see people arguing the integrity is so important that “we played them away and now it’s neutral” or “they had their fans and we can’t have ours” — it might be a big deal in football terms, but in broader society where we have lost 30,000 people and growing that’s not a big deal.
