One Premier League club has reportedly floated the idea of playing out this season’s remaining fixtures abroad, with China thought to be the ideal option.
This interesting idea to deal with how to end the 2019/20 season looks set to be up for discussion as Premier League chiefs prepare for crunch talks tomorrow, according to The Athletic.
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However, the report stresses that some teams are clearly not keen on the idea and will dismiss it out of hand.
It does seem, though, that moving the football away from the worst of the coronavirus pandemic could be a smart move if the season is to be realistically completed by the summer.
It seems likely that the worst is still to come for the UK in terms of numbers of cases of COVID-19, but China has done fine work in halting the spread of the virus.
Despite the illness initially spreading in China and hitting the country hard, it could now be one of the safest places in the world to get football matches going again.
It remains to be seen if enough clubs will go for it, however, as the integrity of the competition would surely have to be questioned if a significant chunk of games were played in neutral venues, as some teams will no doubt feel aggrieved at not getting home advantage in some of their key fixtures.
That said, whenever football starts again here, there could be similar problems as games would almost certainly have to be played behind closed doors anyway, so clubs would not benefit from having their home support.
In truth, it would just be wonderful to have football back on our screens as soon as possible and if games being moved to China can be made to work, the idea should not be completely ruled out.