I am on a time crunch this morning, but I have to bang this out, we need to get back to normality, and you need a daily helping of Arsenal goodness. The Premier League is coming back and I can’t wait. I wish the press would offer up more of a solutions-oriented approach to journo-ing than continuing to highlight individual moaners. Germany has led the way, they are the responsible adult in the room at all times. If they can do it, we can do it and if it all goes wrong: Blame Germany. Simple as that. That’s 21st-century leadership right there.
The Premier League isn’t fucking about. They’re sending secret police to training grounds to check clubs aren’t going past their allotted 75 minutes of training. I find rulings like that kind of absurd.
‘You can breathe, clatter, and sweat over each other… but keep it to 75 minutes, gotta play it safe’
Players are going to be heavily tested, with debate currently underway with the clubs over whether they should be in hotels for 7 or 14 days prior to games. There are still risks associated with this. Hotel workers aren’t often paid the best, they sometimes work other jobs, all it takes is one rogue person to bring in the virus and a whole club is wiped out.
Still, I think we’re at the point now where we’re going to have to work with this. There’s no such thing as ‘totally safe’ and the continuation of the game as we know it. I think that’s the stark reality society is facing up to. You can’t cripple the world forever… because we won’t have much to go back to if we take that stance… and the people that get hurt are not the rich ones. It’s the small independent businesses and jobs that make a city a city.
The bigger concern is that the Premier League clubs are being told that social distancing will remain in force for 6-12 months. I’d take that as 12 months and longer unless this summer rains UV hell on the virus, or people just take off their gloves and get brave with their health. Long and short… the Premier League is not going to have real fans in place for a long time.
This is both a curse and a gift. The curse, Arsenal are going to have to find £93m. The gift? The Premier League is going to have to get creative. I think Charles Allen; exArsenal marketing man, has it right.
I guess the question is what are fans prepared to pay for? Galleries and Museums are faced with exactly the same question. There will be a lot of very good innovation. Great time to be a marketer, even better if you are a digital marketer!!
— Charles Allen (@CharlieAllen66) May 19, 2020
Clubs have roughly 10 games left. Now is the chance to do something crazy. If it works, maybe it carries over into normal times?
I think the biggest innovation has to be digital season tickets. Every single game left this season should be available to purchase. How that’s delivered is a tougher question. The simplest mechanism and the easiest would be to give it to the BBC. Problem with that idea, though wonderful, is it has no future business value. You don’t learn anything from giving it away free. Sounds beastly, but clubs need to learn how to make up lost revenue, not how to get applause from The Guardian.
I’d explore working with someone that’s cash-rich, nimble, and plugged into the internet. Amazon is perfectly poised to pick up all the match and sell them back to the fans.
Covid-Pass Gold: Access to all the games that aren’t free to air for the rest of the season.
Club-Pass: Access to all games that aren’t being aired on the other channels by club.
Game-Pass: Slightly more premium model, where you can dip in and buy an individual game.
Make all of the above global. TIE IT IN WITH GAME DAY FOOD PACKAGES. Imagine getting Camden Hells, a salt beef bagel, and bag of slightly dodgy sweets wrapped in cheap sandwich bags. It’d be epic. Maybe some hotdog stall fragranced candles?
I also wonder whether it’s time for the Premier League to explore a better Game Center type model. America does this so well. You have Jeff and the gang… but with actual goals and moments. How are we in 2020 and we have to get our football rocks off by watching a Chris Kamara reaction on a Saturday? It’s bollocks. The football isn’t exactly a spectacle without the fans, I’m not sure the Premier League is going to win over too many new ones during this period, so why not experiment with tried and true methods that help bring the casuals in?
Maybe clubs could completely lose their fucking minds and do something with Occulus. Imagine integrating Premier League football into VR? You could set cameras up in the stadium that allow fans to sit all over the stadium in virtual seats. I would do that. It’d definitely be more dignified than Pornhub VR.
Anyway, I have to go, but today, I am asking YOU a question… what is your football innovation?
xxx
Andrew not Alan
Emirates
I like Andrew Neil he’s the only part of BBC News that isn’t so left wing it’s a joke and it would appear as is often the case he’s making a lot of sense.
Why is most of the news coverage being controlled by political journalists and not the science ones?
Andy no one thinks the young and healthy cannot get it badly. The young and healthy can be hospitalized and die. This is well acknowledged. But it’s statistically very rare. There are loads of cases of young healthy people being killed/struck down horribly with it, but for every one of those how many cases are there of people recovering without anything life threatening of hospitalizing them? We don’t even know because the gov couldn’t even be arsed to try and track it, but the number must be enormous. Even months back they could say that 80% of confirmed cases will… Read more »
For those still arguing against Troy Deeney, he has a six month old kid with breathing difficulty who has had lots of medical procedure AND a family relative living with him also with severe medical issues. Respectable epidemiologists are reporting that ethnicity does play a role and that even taking into account socio-economic situation, health (pre existing medical condition are more prevalent if you are poor), BAME are still more likely to die from it. Now if you were Troy Deeney and your doctor were to tell you, you have 1 chance over 100 to be responsible for the death… Read more »
China1,
A large proportion of those hospitalised and who survived did not have pre-existing condition or at least did not know they had a pre-existing condition.
From those survivors a large number will need rehabilitation for a fair few months.
Look at Boris Johnson. Despite having the best medical personnel looking after him, he still can’t do a full day of work (and that’s not due to his usual lazyness). And that’s despite a workday of thr PM being a lot less physically demanding than most.
Valentin based on your info above I think he’s right to stay home.
Marc
Andrew Neil is a forensic interviewer in the same mould as the Dimbleby family. He is able to hide his own politics by treating ALL politicians with equal disrespect if they are not up to their brief.
However, the main point Neil made is that most journalists and media have not got a clue about this virus and are therefore not competent to express an
opinion about what is going on.
andy
Kluivert is definitely a very interesting and high potential option.
But given Roma’s financial status and other factors right now. I think we should go for Zaniolo .
Top top talent. Plays 10 ,8, RW.
Mkhi + 20-25 mil should get it done imo.
“However, the main point Neil made is that most journalists and media have not got a clue about this virus and are therefore not competent to express an
opinion about what is going on.”
They aren’t competent to express an opinion on most things, but still do. Why would this be any different?
Emirates
“the main point Neil made is that most journalists and media have not got a clue about this virus and are therefore not competent to express an
opinion about what is going on.”
You could apply that to most subjects when talking about journalists and it’s part of my point – surely the science journalists should be leading this as they should have the best chance of understanding what’s going on.
Valentin until we have widespread antibody testing any stats re the severity will continue to mean very little We know it has spread like wildfire but the numbers don’t come close to reflecting that. If the only stays the gov are collating are generally on bad cases then yes expect a very dark picture. This applies to absolutely everything. It would be like collating statistics on car accidents and related injuries but only looking at a small fraction of actual crashes and a huge majority of those just being taken from cases where cars have had high speed head on… Read more »
The question is if ethnicity does play a role why is it not ravaging Africa?
China
To continue your analogy it’s also like not counting the millions of journeys that don’t involve an accident.
Tbf maybe it is ravaging Africa but hasn’t been well covered by local or international media
I hope not but it’s hard to know for sure
Trump!
lol
China
The media over here are fixated on what’s happening at home – you can understand why – so it’s very possible things are being missed.
China 1
The reality is that most African Countries are hardly testing. Nigeria with a population of 205 Million has conducted sofar just 105 tests.
Yet everyone knows that mortality rates in Africa are horrendous. So the probability is that few countries are providing an accurate diagnosis on that
continent.
Interesting numbers Emirates. Maybe someone on here who lives in Africa can give a verdict at least on the situation local to where they are
I think a few guys here are Nigerian right?
Marc I will credit you for being right about media fear mongering. I didn’t see much that I would classify as it in the early months when you started kicking off about it but recently I’m seeing loads One day sky news reports that scientists in South Korea have confirmed that you can’t catch it twice. Two days later they’re posting editorials written by some guy who demonstrates he has barely even read anything about the virus saying antibody tests don’t really mean anything It would be great if these journalists would even read the front page news on their… Read more »
The ignorance about Africa is staggering, so from Egypt to South Africa the whole world has missed horrendas mortality rates?
China
That’s the problem – if they were pushing a single agenda at least they’d show some consistency but they really are just throwing as much mud as they can, even if lots of it contradicts other parts.
It’s incredibly irresponsible.
China 1 One of the leading Scientists at the London School of Tropical Medicine is of Nigerian background. However, she is a specialist in Tropical Diseases specifically Malaria. She is not a specialist in Corona Virus, but when I have spoken to her on a number of occasions she is very well briefed on what is going on, because she is one of only 15 scientists who have been working there throughout pandemic. Most of the 1,000 or so research scientists have been either seconded to NHS or furlowed, although many have returned last week to work. My feedback when… Read more »
Wouldnt Africans in the diaspora be talking of relatives dying en masse?
Hi ES
I spoke to a NHs surgeon a few months ago and he said no matter how much money is given to the NHS it’s the middle management that lets it down.
We have seen this with supply of ppe and sending old folks back to care homes.
Hopefully there will be a review after this.
The Prem needs to get going as planned then we can all cheer up.
Sid The scientist’s own father who is in his 80s underwent a heart operation in January, but suffered a leakage which required hospital treatment. Subsequently he contracted Covid 9 and has been in St Thomas Hospital where he was diagnosed as assymatic and has survived. So it should not be assumed that everyone in Bame Community is going to die if they contract the disease One of my neighbours has been in a Nursing Home, because he suffers from Alzheimer. This was a nursing home in Camden where one of the patients contracted Covid 19 whilst being treated in Hospital… Read more »
Sid well as you said Africa is enormous in scale and diversity and you’re right I’m ignorant about it
I haven’t seen any news articles about corona virus in Africa for about 2 months. I’m not presuming anything – I’m assuming nothing.
People in the west seem to believe there has been a massive cover up in China. In Brazil and parts of Central America its assumed that the large death toll is being swept under the carpet wherever possible
I don’t know anything about how things are across Africa so I won’t assume one way or the other
If there were horrendous mortality rates the CNN, BBC would be on it like white on rice
Ebola, famine, genocide, AIDS etc could escape their hawk eyed reporting
*could not
What I find absolutely staggering is that the British (or most others) government doesn’t have a technology task force which can be mobilized to address any major issue I keep saying that outside of the actual research done on the virus, most of the last few months haven’t been handled any different than they might have been in the 1990s It should be that scientists bring data to the gov. The gov synthsizes it into a range of problem statements, and a team of tech and innovation experts are told to come up with any and all realistic tech based… Read more »
https://youtu.be/vWVSYrOuMPM
The link is for you china1
Emirates
Your massive ego-driven ignorance about Africa is astonishing.
If covid-19 were so devastating to Africans, wouldn’t the emergency rooms be filled with capacity and the mortuaries stuffed to the brim?
There are many other ways to know if the pandemic was so devastating without using the metric of formal testing.
By the way I’m glad you have spoken to that one Nigerian expert at the London school of hygiene, mighty pleased for you.
thoughts on Mikki plus 13m for Kluivert… another winger?
Got the bloodline for sure, but can we convert him to striker- we are getting winger heavy
Emiratesstroller
“The reality is that most African Countries are hardly testing. Nigeria with a population of 205 Million has conducted sofar just 105 tests”
Don’t comment on things you know nothing about stroller if you can’t be bothered to at least do a Google search. It’s 34000+ tests done so far. Ridiculously low for such a large population, yes. But that’s a mile off 105.
Frost
Apologies yes the figures shown today are now 36,000. However, the 105 was a
figure which was a figure previously published. I did not misread that figure.
Dissenter
I made no comments about Africa apart to point out that the mortality rates there do not compare remotely to those in Europe.
Moreover I pointed out that an 80 year old Nigerian living now in UK who had
undertaken heart surgery in January had recovered from Corona Virus as he
was assymatic
Not every African is going to be vulnerable and die in a pandemic.
Giroud scorpuan king was Zidanesque
People in the UK can be thankful they have a complete Wally in charge during the pandemic and not those who contribute to the comments section at LG.