Covid-19 is disrupting all walks of life, football is no different with the Premier League and Football league suspended until further notice and non-league cancelled all together.
We spoke with chairman of City of Liverpool Paul Manning to find out how it’s affecting his club.
With Steps five and six in the football hierarchy having been voided for the season, City of Liverpool’s season has come to an early end.
They sat mid table, no fear of relegation or aspirations for promotion.
As Paul Manning says, in their first season in the division they just wanted to stay up and “push for the top next year”.
While he is disappointed football has been cancelled, he understands saying: “Whilst it’s obviously disappointing for the league season to be terminated with something like 25% of the season outstanding, in the circumstances there is literally no option.
“Human life is the most important factor and groups of even two people can transmit the virus not only from one person to the other, but then onto countless number of people in the wider circles of family and friends.”
The football league was put on hold from 14th March after Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta contracted the virus.
However, the non-league fixtures went ahead as planned that weekend, much to the dismay of many players, managers and owners.
City of Liverpool’s game was called off but Mr Manning was not happy with the decision to press ahead.
“COLFC recognised this problem before the last round of matches that took place on Saturday 14th March and called our game off, whilst other games went ahead, some of which contained massive crowds in the several hundreds or even thousands.
“Those clubs must now surely be questioning the wisdom of the decision to allow people to congregate for what amounted to a meaningless game of football.”
Like many clubs and businesses in these unprecedented times, financial worries are at the front of everyone’s mind.
There is no gate money coming into the club with no football fixtures being held.
Mr Manning didn’t want to talk about specifics but saying it shouldn’t be a huge problem and “we’ll be here in 2021″. Not every club is as lucky as that.
He is just looking forward to the next season and getting kicked off again.
“We hope everybody associated with non-league football in the local area stays safe and we can start the roller coaster all over again in July for season 2020/21 – which at this point is far from certain,” he added.
(Image by Google Street maps)
