Football and the Coronavirus

[BaZ87]

I'd think that was unlikely. Masters won't be making the decision, the clubs will be and I can't see any of the 17 sides that don't face relegation being too keen on blocking promotions if they're going to face legal challenges from the EFL and equally I don't think many will want a 22/23 team PL next season. And all this assumes the FA won't block any plans to scrap relegations & promotions, which has been widely reported and Masters didn't deny when he was asked about it.

Anyway, news is just breaking that La Liga has been given the green light to restart from the 8th June.

 

[woppy101]

Anyway, news is just breaking that La Liga has been given the green light to restart from the 8th June.

I think we will restart on the weekend of the 6th

 

[mysticsniper]

I'd think that was unlikely. Masters won't be making the decision, the clubs will be and I can't see any of the 17 sides that don't face relegation being too keen on blocking promotions if they're going to face legal challenges from the EFL and equally I don't think many will want a 22/23 team PL next season. And all this assumes the FA won't block any plans to scrap relegations & promotions, which has been widely reported and Masters didn't deny when he was asked about it.

Anyway, news is just breaking that La Liga has been given the green light to restart from the 8th June.

You mean like the legal challenges from the 3 relegated teams, if the PL season gets curtailed

That is good news about La Liga.

 

[BaZ87]

I think we will restart on the weekend of the 6th

6th June? I think that's very optimistic. The best case scenario was the following weekend and the big issue to come from the last PL meeting with players and managers was concerns over a lack of training.

Reportedly the PL will meet again next week to approve plans for full contact training. I assume that's won't be finalised before the end of the week, leaving clubs with just 2 weeks of full contact training before the 12th June target. I think the 19th or 26th is looking more realistic.

You mean like the legal challenges from the 3 relegated teams, if the PL season gets curtailed

That is good news about La Liga.

No, I was referring to the two possible scenarios where relegation was being scrapped. Option 1, you scrap relegations and promotions, in which case you're going to face legal challenges from the EFL. Option 2, you scrap relegation but allow promotions. At first thought option 2 seems a sensible option and fairly risk free but how would the 17 sides not facing relegation react to this and why would they vote for it? They'll be losing more money as TV money will now be split between 22/23 teams instead of 20 and they're going to have to play more games. They'll only agree to this if they have to and the FA may have given them a way out. If the FA veto an attempt to scrap relegation then it's possible that the PL could relegate the bottom 3 and not face any legal challenge - if the decision is taken out of their hands then it's the FA, not them that would be liable I'd have thought.

 

[BaZ87]

The results of the 2nd round of testing have just been announced. Just 2 positive tests from 996 tests, compared to 6 from 750 odd last time.

This is surely a big boost for the League as it shows that the virus hasn't spread at any greater rate than before training resumed, in fact it's slower. Obviously it's a very small sample and we'll need to see more rounds of testing before we can say anything for certain but it will hopefully go some way to easing some players concerns over the risks of returning.

 

[Bigpig]

Just cancel the league what's the point then.

 

[dpbadger]

Only 2 positives from a larger pool of tests, pretty good numbers as BaZ87 said letrs see what the next rounds are. Also today we should see some results from the EFL tests.

edit: EFL Championship clubs.

 

[Bigpig]

Just cancel the league what's the point then.

Let me clarify this post since it's been called silly it was a ninja edit as I posted in the wrong thread.

My views on this virus lark
League should end in 3 ways.
1:Void (which should not happen)
2: points per game with champions and relegation.
3. Play remaining games with champions and relegation.

Anything else is not worth the risk and daft.

 

[dpbadger]

Only 2 positive tests from 1000 championship players.

 

[BaZ87]

I have to say these are very surprising results we're getting. The PL and Championship have now carried out over 2700 tests with just 10 positives. I've not seen the follow-up test results in Germany but from their first round of testing they had 10 positives from around 1400 tests and as a country they've not been hit nearly as hard as we have. We should be getting far more positives than we are.

The big challenge left for the Leagues is the situation around who will need to isolate once contact training and matches resume. If, like Germany and Italy, only the player that tests positive has to isolate then it's difficult to see how the League won't restart now. In Italy it took a lot of arguing between the FA and Government before they agreed to this - the initial position was that the entire squad would need to isolate, which would make completing the season very very difficult.

 

[woppy101]

I have to say these are very surprising results we're getting. The PL and Championship have now carried out over 2700 tests with just 8 positives. I've not seen the follow-up test results in Germany but from their first round of testing they had 10 positives from around 1400 tests and as a country they've not been hit nearly as hard as we have. We should be getting far more positives than we are.

The big challenge left for the Leagues is the situation around who will need to isolate once contact training and matches resume. If, like Germany and Italy, only the player that tests positive has to isolate then it's difficult to see how the League won't restart now. In Italy it took a lot of arguing between the FA and Government before they agreed to this - the initial position was that the entire squad would need to isolate, which would make completing the season very very difficult.

Question is how many of those tests have produced false negatives, some people in hospitals have had to be tested 2-3 times before finally giving a positive result

 

[nicktay2605]

Question is how many of those tests have produced false negatives, some people in hospitals have had to be tested 2-3 times before finally giving a positive result

That's a fair point, a colleague of mine had Covid-19 symptoms so got himself tested and it took three tests before they were confident that he didn't have it.

 

[BaZ87]

Question is how many of those tests have produced false negatives, some people in hospitals have had to be tested 2-3 times before finally giving a positive result

I believe the accuracy of the tests are meant to be 98.8%, so there will be some. With 2 tests per week, the chances of a player being positive but returning a negative result twice is close to 1 in 10,000.

 

[woppy101]

I believe the accuracy of the tests are meant to be 98.8%, so there will be some. With 2 tests per week, the chances of a player being positive but returning a negative result twice is close to 1 in 10,000.

See the above post, Covid19 false negatives are quite common, look how many tests are being carried out compared to the amount of people tested it’s almost double, there are reports of people that clearly have Covid19 but are taking 3-4 tests to confirm

edit just read this apparently up to 30% of tests could produce a false negative
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...sults-from-self-testing-for-covid-19-at-home/
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020...9-tests-pandemic-virus-antibodies-swab-blood/

 

[BaZ87]

See the above post, Covid19 false negatives are quite common, look how many tests are being carried out compared to the amount of people tested it’s almost double

It depends on your definition of quite common. If the accuracy of the tests are 98.8% then just over 1 from every hundred will get a false result. When you're carrying out 100k tests per day then yes, you'll get a lot of false results but as a percentage of the total it's very low.

When you're testing twice per week, as the PL and Championship are doing, the chances of the same person getting false negatives twice in a row is just over 1 in 10,000. Again, with the NHS carrying out 100k tests per day it's likely that you'll get some back to back false results but as a percentage it will be tiny. For the PL & Championship the likelihood of them getting 2 back to back false results is very small. And when you look at the likelihood of a PL footballer having 3 or more false negatives, you have more chance of being struck by lightening or Everton winning a trophy.

The above is no doubt part of the reason why the PL have began with non contact training. They'll know that some positive players have slipped through the net from the first round of testing and they'll know that there's a very small chance that somebody might slip through the net again in round 2. Nobody will slip through the net 4 times in a row, before contact training resumes, though.

edit: in responose to your edit, the accuracy of tests will be different depending on the tests being used. The tests the PL are using are said to be 98.8% accurate.

 

[woppy101]

It depends on your definition of quite common. If the accuracy of the tests are 98.8% then just over 1 from every hundred will get a false result. When you're carrying out 100k tests per day then yes, you'll get a lot of false results but as a percentage of the total it's very low.

When you're testing twice per week, as the PL and Championship are doing, the chances of the same person getting false negatives twice in a row is just over 1 in 10,000. Again, with the NHS carrying out 100k tests per day it's likely that you'll get some back to back false results but as a percentage it will be tiny. For the PL & Championship the likelihood of them getting 2 back to back false results is very small. And when you look at the likelihood of a PL footballer having 3 or more false negatives, you have more chance of being struck by lightening or Everton winning a trophy.

The above is no doubt part of the reason why the PL have began with non contact training. They'll know that some positive players have slipped through the net from the first round of testing and they'll know that there's a very small chance that somebody might slip through the net again in round 2. Nobody will slip through the net 4 times in a row, before contact training resumes, though.

edit: in responose to your edit, the accuracy of tests will be different depending on the tests being used. The tests the PL are using are said to be 98.8% accurate.

AFAIWA the test the premier league is using is the swab test, and they are still giving 24 false negatives out of 100 suspected covid cases.
They now say that between 60-70% of Covid19 cases/carriers are now asymptomatic so the clubs might be testing players showing no symptoms but carrying the virus and because they give a false negative slip through the net. Once the antibody tests are available they could be used in conjunction with the swab tests to give a better result.
I’m just replying a reason as to why we aren’t getting as many positives as we thought we would.

 

[BaZ87]

AFAIWA the test the premier league is using is the swab test, and they are still giving 24 false negatives out of 100 suspected covid cases.
They now say that between 60-70% of Covid19 cases/carriers are now asymptomatic so the clubs might be testing players showing no symptoms but carrying the virus and because they give a false negative slip through the net. Once the antibody tests are available they could be used in conjunction with the swab tests to give a better result.

I'm no expert on testing but as far as I know there isn't a set accuracy for swab testing - it all depends on who, how, where & when the test has been carried out. And in the PL's case the accuracy is said to be 98.8%. At least that's the claim.

 

[woppy101]

I'm no expert on testing but as far as I know there isn't a set accuracy for swab testing - it all depends on who, how, where & when the test has been carried out. And in the PL's case the accuracy is said to be 98.8%. At least that's the claim.

I would honestly take that claim with a Massive pinch of salt, considering most of the worlds testing accuracy is in the low 90s at best, the premier league isn’t going to be any different

 

[Andybtsn]

Hull have a couple positives. The only team adverse to restarting in the Champ. *shock*

 

[BaZ87]

I would honestly take that claim with a Massive pinch of salt, considering most of the worlds testing accuracy is in the low 90s at best, the premier league isn’t going to be any different

Maybe, one thing's for sure is the PL can afford the best so it wouldn't surprise me if they are getting more accurate results than elsewhere.