I know of one who travelled there today having stayed in Newcastle since Saturday. A former forum member. He's treating it as a holiday!!!
If we can beat Norwich it will be all the sweeter, as they’ll then possibly regret not giving us an extra game to contend with.
Joke's on them, they get Maxwel Cornet back, but we have his Ivorian pal Kamara, plus Louza, Sarr and Etebo!
The game had to be called off as we are only allowed to play them on a midweek evening when it's p1ss1ng down with rain or the air temperature is below freezing. The full moon tonight wouldn't have helped matters either with most of the Burnley squad and fans howling and running around half-naked on the Moors.
Predictable. Was always going to happen in the end - their fixtures continue to pile up, yet it does give us more opportunity to get mentally prepared for Norwich now. Let's just hope we can take advantage of the extra day to work on tactics etc.
Coach was unable to leave Watford on time due to Tufan finishing off his pre-coach meal. Then the club coach radio music was too loud to hear the announcement. By the time the lads got to Burnley they assumed it was on. All this time the PL have been trying to send the message via carrier pigeons, a few got lost on the way, but one finally landed and CR70 was stunned when he found out. He's ordered an extra slot on MotD to have a good tangent with Shearer and Co. over it.
Complaining about International breaks meaning they will have less time to fit games in .. https://www.uptheclarets.com/messag...&t=59683&sid=03698602105e69becdee12b85cbd033c Well yes it might be frustrating but FIFA doesn’t cater just for Premier league club cancelling games. Maybe the clubs and powers that be should have thought about that before being allowing to postponed games at will ?
I think everyone is being very mean to Burnley. The league counts injuries toward the process because the players playing through covid are more likely to sustain injury. Burnley declared they requested the game off so Watford could delay traveling if they wish until the morning. I suspect Kabasele is gettting bored waiting in a Watford hotel. Why shouldnt Burnley ask for a cancellation? We did, Numerous other clubs have.
The Premier league has to take the blame for all this mess not the teams asking for games to be cancelled. The rules they have set are ridiculous.
We had no choice but to cancel though. We travelled up the night before in good faith with every intention of wanting the game to actually go ahead. A load of positive covid tests in the morning meant we literally had no way of fielding a team, already being in Burnley there was no option to play under 23s like Leeds did on Sunday (they had a 15 year old on the bench). Remember this was when highly transmission Omicron had started to to run riot. Burnley could’ve easily got a team together but they don’t want to, they’ve made no attempt to get the game played. Completely different and non-comparable circumstances.
It would be interesting to know, say, Leeds United’s views on all this. They have had stacks of injuries since the early part of the season yet, pre-Omicron back in the autumn, there was no suggestion they might be able to request any postponements.
I'll grumble about it being laughable it was postponed especially as the U23s played but I guess we postponed it first time round. Also after the Arsenal fiasco league probably couldn't say no.
Our closest comparison is the Palace home game we cancelled. Probably had u23s we could have fielded.
That had more to do with what Danny Rose had done in the bogs. Still smelled a lot sweeter than Burnley does mind.
I don’t think they are “rules”. Just stuff scribbled on the back of an envelope, made up as they go along.
They clearly don’t want to disclose any hard and fast numbers so teams don’t know what to work to, yet they’ve tied themselves in knots having granted some teams postponements meaning they have to them grant others as well. It’s a mess entirely of their own making, it’s made even worse when they take so long to make a decision as well, which gives an even greater impression they’re just making it up as they go along.
Yeah but how is that made up? There is nothing definitive regarding covid cases and now normal injuries and Afcon seem to be counting towards it too.
You’d like to think that the reason it took so long yesterday was that they were genuinely weighing up whether this was their line in the sand. But who knows (and frankly, it would have been unfair to treat Burnley differently to Arsenal). The BBC has an analysis piece suggesting this has to stop soon: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/60028973
Well, it seems everything counts towards it - the Arsenal postponement on Sunday with just 1 Covid case demonstrates that. It doesn't matter if players are unavailable because of Covid injury, normal injury, AFCON, the fact you've just flogged them or loaned them out... if you have fewer than 13 players available you have the right to ask for the game to be postponed without punishment. I agree 100% from the outside looking in it's farcical but I don't think there's a case to be made the clubs themselves are in the dark. All that's happening is some have more motive than others to game the rules to their advantage.
That was kind of my point, it seems farcical that you could have 1 covid case and the rest injuries and still get a game postponed because of not having 13 players. Why did this never happen before, or indeed on the very rare occasion it did, didn’t it mean forfeiting the game and a points deduction?
But it’s still the PL rules. They have set the rule that an U23 player who hasn’t been in a first team squad before is not a 1st team player. And the rules around cancelling games is based upon ‘number of first-team players available’ I don’t like it anymore than anyone else and I think all clubs should have been forced to field kids. But to expect Burnley to massively weaken themselves when the rules/guidelines state they don’t have to, is stretching things. They’ve just done what everyone else has done. It’s the PL that are to blame here.
