Premier League ‘set to continue as majority of clubs want to play through festive period and NONE want season postponed’

The 20 clubs’ executives met on Monday to discuss whether or not to halt the season due to a rise in Covid cases.

And the majority of the clubs decided to continue playing over the festive period, the athletic report, despite the recent spike in positive Covid cases.

Omicron continues to cause chaos across the country. And while the government have not brought in a lockdown at this stage, the Premier League took the initiative by calling emergency talks.

During the meeting Liverpool proposed moving a round of fixtures and despite support from other clubs the idea was rejected due to the complexity involved.

There was also debate about postponing the season completely, but this idea reportedly had no support from any of the 20 clubs.

After the League Cup quarter-finals this midweek, the next set of Premier League games were scheduled for December 26-27.

There is also a full fixture list for December 28-30 and another for January 1-3 before the FA Cup third round on the following weekend.

This weekend, six of the ten Premier League matches were cancelled.

Manchester United, Leicester and Aston Villa were among the clubs to suffer Covid outbreaks within their squads.

Chelsea and Liverpool both had players forced to sit out of their matches on Sunday after testing positive.

But with enough players available to field a team – albeit with just six subs named by Thomas Tuchel – the Premier League rejected Chelsea’s appeal to have their match at Wolves cancelled.

Tottenham did return to action for the first time since December 5 yesterday with a 2-2 draw against Liverpool.

Antonio Conte’s side had at least eight players test positive earlier in the month.

They have three games in hand on the top four with two Premier League games called off for Covid – and their away trip to Burnley because of snow.

Source: the sun