Football resumes this month with west London’s clubs cranking up to full steam - whether they like it or not.
While Chelsea’s fans will be reluctantly dividing their interest between FA Cup and Premier League, Hoops and Whites supporters have been caught on the hop by the sudden declaration that the Championship is back on.
“There’s been absolutely no consultation with individual clubs,” stormed Rangers’ chief executive Lee Hoos, pointing out that he had only been given 40 minutes’ notice of the Football League’s declaration.
Despite not being back to full-contact training, hostilities resume in three weeks... and manager Mark Warburton shares Hoos’ unease.
Across at Craven Cottage, Fulham are taking a more laid-back approach to the restart on the weekend of 20/21 June, despite two players testing positive for COVID-19. “Let’s finish what we started,” was the response of Whites Number 10, Tom Cairney.
Where were we?
Gazing back to the last competitive football seems as far removed from real life as watching scratchy black-and-white First World War footage, but 21 March should have been a huge day for west London.
Chelsea were meant to have travelled to Leicester for a lunchtime FA Cup quarter-final, while Loftus Road hosted the little matter of the QPR v Fulham derby.
Potentially, the Blues may have three extra games on top of the league catch-up matches, should they make it to the final on 1 August. As for the Premier League, the key target is clinging on to a Champions League place. Though 70% of Blues fans surveyed by Chelsea Supporters Trust said they’d rather the season ended now.
For the Rs, mid-table is assured, but there’s still a fighting chance of challenging for a play-off place. Meanwhile, Fulham sit in third, nursing serious hopes of a tilt at a Premier League return.
What’s on TV?
When spectator-free games resume (with Chelsea first in action on the weekend of 20/21 June) every Premier League match will be live on the telly.
For fans, closure of pubs makes the season’s resumption tricky. Unless you have home access to Sky, BT and Amazon Prime, you’ll struggle to watch all the games, and there’ll be no amiable hugging of complete strangers in the Blue Lion when Tammy Abraham scores. Encouragingly, broadcasters such as Sky and the BBC will be airing some games for free on terrestrial TV.
At the moment it looks like:
- Sky Sports - 64 games with 25 games airing for free on Freeview channel Pick
- BT Sport - 20 games (none free to air)
- The BBC - 4 games all airing for free
- Amazon Prime - 4 games all airing for free
A handful of hacks will be allowed in, but supporters, hot-dog vendors, programme sellers, ticket touts and stallholders selling scarves that make Frank Lampard look like Al Capone will be missing from the matchday pageantry.
We’ll be able to admire Chelsea youngsters’ nimble footwork, and the silky skills of N’Golo Kante, now back in training.
Many Championship games are likely to be broadcast on Sky, but with clubs and TV companies deep in negotiation, a full fixture list is still unclear.
However, the spectre remains of the fear of a second wave of coronavirus, and the recent positive test result at the Cottage underlines how fragile the situation is.
For now, expect players in echoey stadiums, where every shouted instruction from the bench and every “Oi, over here” to team-mates is crystal-clear. In other words, much like watching Arsenal at home.
The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and unless specifically stated are not necessarily those of Hammersmith & Fulham Council.
Want to read more news stories like this? Subscribe to our weekly e-news bulletin.
