Thomas Tuchel is devastated over the Premier League decision to let Chelsea play despite COVID cases in their camp. The Blues are struggling with an injury crisis and are also hit with a COVID outbreak. Chelsea had requested the league to postpone their game against Wolves as they had some COVID-positive tested players in the squad.
However, the Premier League rejected Chelsea’s request and progressed with the game. Therefore, Chelsea played with their 2nd team against the Wolves. As a result, they were held for a draw at Molineux. Chelsea had 7 players test positive for COVID within a span of 5 days.
Moreover, Thomas Tuchel was angrier after Chelsea’s draw against Wolves and highlighted that Jorginho has also tested positive. This is becoming an increasingly worrying issue for the Premier League as many matches are being postponed. Only four matches took place out of a possible ten matches over the weekend due to the COVID outbreak.
More and more managers are getting frustrated with Premier League’s calls over the clubs’ request to postpone their matches. Thomas Tuchel had this to say to BBC Sport,
“I don’t know if it was close to not happening. We were struggling with the preparation because we had several consecutive days with positive Covid tests and then we travelled together for three hours with the team, we had dinner together we had another positive test with Jorginho.”
“People are worried because they were on the same bus and had the same dinner. Obviously it was not enough to postponement the match and we had to play but you cannot demand 100% focus otherwise it would be stupid to normally focus if you can do this without being calm. It was everything else but calm.”
Why Thomas Tuchel is right about Premier League’s handling of the COVID situation?
Premier League had to postpone a lot of matches in the past few weeks due to the COVID outbreak in the camps. However, the league has rejected a few teams’ requests to postpone their matches as they did of Chelsea. However, this is not the right decision by the league as the cases will keep on increasing. Moreover, the matches will have to be postponed to a later date where the clubs will face fixture congestion with matches of other competitions.
More importantly, the players and staff won’t feel safe as they spend most of their time with players who test positive. As a result, the players and staff members may not be in the right mindset entering into the game. In addition, it also asks the manager a question about which players to start since most of his team is unavailable. There is also a possibility that there will be more cases and the manager will be left with no players to select. Thomas Tuchel had this to say regarding the players’ situation at Chelsea,
“Today in the morning at 08:30 they knock on the door and have another test nobody knew about, so do we wake players up who want to sleep a bit longer? OK. “
“I gave my opinion and you can do with it what you want. I can’t compare to other games, it is just our situation. It is not safe. We talk about protecting players and a safe environment but it is not safe. I would be not surprised if the next test shows up and we have more positives. How should it stop if we sit in the bus and have dinners and just stay together like nothing happened?”
What should the Premier League do?
Premier League needs to sort this situation out as soon as possible. Many managers are furious over this situation at their clubs. Therefore, there is a discussion going on whether to postpone the Christmas fixture of the Premier League. That seems highly likely as almost every club is facing a crisis over the COVID outbreak and needs a break from this to breathe.
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