Congratulations Liverpool fans, you’ve won the title.
There we go, easy wasn’t it. The best team this season by far. A wonderful attack, stable defence and a manager so likeable he’s become near irritating for it.
Here’s your trophy, but don’t raise it aloft now. Wait until a time in the hopefully not-too-distant-future when you can celebrate. When Anfield can be packed and when fully grown adults can have too many bevvies and let the emotion of the victory and stress of the situation out.
Tears will flow. Through victory, and relief that those of us left have come through a pandemic we were unlucky enough to be around for.
Whatever happens from now won’t change that. Playing games at neutral empty venues will not make Liverpool’s title win any more legitimate. If anything, it will taint it more.
The pretence that this disinfected football represents the 2019/20 season will quickly be torn to shreds. Far from it seeing the Premier League campaign out with integrity, it’ll become the Covid Cup.
It would be digging up the corpse of the season, giving it CPR, putting it in a suit and trying to pretend it’s still alive.
Once we accept it’s dead, which it is, then we can move on to the more realistic questions of what will be decided in terms of places and money, and how on Earth we manage to move on from this huge blow to football.
Endless arguments can then follow about how things are decided. Leeds United are top of the Championship, and it’d be great to get them back in the Premier League, but there’s the very real prospect they’d have managed to Leeds it up in their remaining matches.
Should they be promoted it would be far more generous than awarding the title to Jurgen Klopp’s men, yet could be the “fairest” way forward.
Sure, lots of opposition fans will use the scenario to send digs to their Liverpool equivalents over it ‘not being a proper title win’. That will happen anyway. Whether or not the Reds get to play out their final games, the digs will still be there, way beyond our lifetimes.
People will say ‘you’re not counting the Covid season are you?’ when totting up title wins, and it will sting. Liverpool fans, you’re going to have to accept that will be the reality, because schadenfreude reigns.
And, I’m not meaning to hurt your feelings further, but it’s not all about you. It may mean more, there’s an element of truth in that, however, Liverpool does not equal football.
Sunday saw reports that ‘more clubs’ will be willing to agree to neutral venues if the threat of relegation is removed. That then led to indignation from several quarters.
These clubs threatening to veto the Covid Cup end of the season, aren’t doing so purely on health and moral grounds. How very dare they. How dare clubs who are in danger of relegation, and a huge impact on their future, look out for their own interests.
Where’s their Blitz Spirit?
How dare West Ham believe their end of season home game against Aston Villa won’t have the same advantage for them if it’s played behind nobody at the Etihad. How dare Aston Villa be of the belief their home crowd would have helped them against Wolves. How dare Bournemouth think they’d have a better chance of points against Southampton if the match was played, as it was set to be, in front of their fans.
The other option of waiting until matches can be played in front of fans also falls to pieces under even the gentlest scrutiny. Players who were injured would then not be, players who were fit would then be injured, players who have been training in their four acre back garden would have advantage over those who have spent much of the last month doing sit-ups on their city balcony.
There is no integrity. The 2019/20 season is deceased. Next season is looking a little shaky, so let’s start planning for that now, a new football until we’re through all of this.
Once we accept that, we can fly through the stages of grief and argue about what happens next. Much of that will be guided by money, and if it’s safe and not too distasteful to get some football on this summer then let’s do so, without the pretence it’s anything other than that.
A mini tournament, the Boris Trophy, whatever. Government backed distraction for the masses, which also pleases the TV rights holders. As Matt Hancock parrots ‘We’re following the science’, football’s leaders can parrot ‘We’re following Government advice’.
2019/20: May it rest in peace.
