Premier League to play on despite COVID concerns
The Athletic FC Podcast
The Athletic
4.0 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 December 2021
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mark Chapman is joined by The Athletic's Adam Crafton to discuss the fallout from the Premier League's decision on Monday not to postpone a round of fixtures over Christmas despite the rise in COVID cases continuing to put matches in jeopardy.
We're also joined by The Athletic's senior writer Dominic Fifield and our Leeds correspondent Phil Hay to look at Chelsea and Leeds - two of the clubs who have been badly affected by the recent chaos in different ways, and with it being announced that 16% of Premier League footballers are unvaccinated we attempt to work out the reasons why and whether football can do anything about this issue.
All that plus a look ahead to the January transfer window and our panel pick their footballing highlights of 2021.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Athletic |
| 0:02.7 | Hello, I'm Mark Chapman, welcome to the Athletic Football Pod. |
| 0:17.8 | Adam Crafton will take us inside the Premier League meeting yesterday that ended |
| 0:21.7 | with clubs deciding to try and carry on playing all scheduled matches over Christmas, despite |
| 0:27.1 | the continuing COVID outbreaks. We'll also be joined by the athletics Phil Hay and Don Pfeield |
| 0:32.2 | who cover Leeds and Chelsea respectively, two of the clubs who have been really affected by the chaos |
| 0:36.9 | that's going on |
| 0:37.6 | and have made no secret of their displeasure at the current state of club. |
| 0:47.7 | Since last week's pod, then, we've had nine Premier League fixtures postponed due to COVID outbreaks |
| 0:52.3 | in a number of teams across the league. |
| 0:54.6 | The Premier League chairman and owners held the Zoom meeting on Monday afternoon to discuss |
| 0:59.2 | the situation. It was thought that postponing an entire round of fixtures over Christmas |
| 1:04.5 | was looking lightly. However, the final outcome was to do nothing and just carry on. |
| 1:10.3 | Adam, why do you think they went with this option? |
| 1:12.9 | Probably because there's still insufficient data is one reason to clearly show, I suppose, |
| 1:20.9 | how serious this current variant is. |
| 1:25.2 | I think that's one of the reasons, a bit like the reason that the government |
| 1:28.6 | chose, you know, not to take really, really drastic restrictive measures earlier this week. And also |
| 1:35.0 | because, you know, when the data is inconclusive, the government, the Premier League, I think, |
| 1:41.5 | are minded not to go and lose or spend a lot more money, |
| 1:46.7 | which it will cost them to make this decision. So ultimately, you've had a series of meetings |
| 1:51.7 | over the last few days where everyone's had a lot of conversations, considered three different |
... |
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