Third Brighton player contracts coronavirus – and football isn’t happy

The world has officially gone made. A third Brighton & Hove Albion player has tested positive for coronavirus, with some other football supporters claiming that it’s either a deliberate infection or a hoax to stop the Premier League season resuming.

Brighton deputy chairman Paul Barber confirmed that a Brighton player tested positive for the virus on Saturday. The club haven’t named the unfortunate individual, just as they kept anonymous the two players who contracted coronavirus in March.

Premier League clubs had been due to meet on Monday for further discussions on Project Restart. A top flight player contracting the disease will only serve to heighten fears that England’s top flight is trying to rush back into action before it is truly safe to do so.

The Premier League is coming under pressure from all directions to resume. Liverpool seem to have decided that winning their precious title is more important than the safety of players, staff and all those workers required to host a top flight football match.

The league is also in danger of being in breach of it’s massive broadcasting contracts if football doesn’t restart soon. As always with the Premier League, money and greed seems to be the overriding factor in guiding the desperation to get the show back on ASAP.

That’s led to suggestions like neutral venues, five substitutions per side and reducing matches down from 90 minutes.

Making such major changes to the structure and format of the league with a quarter of the season left to go would dramatically alter the rules, ruining any sense of sporting integrity.

How can a competition which begins with each club having 19 home and 19 away games, played over 90 minutes and with three substitutions finish with nine hour-long games in neutral venues in which you can substitute half your outfield players? It’s simply not the same competition.

So desperate to get games back on are the Premier League that they’ve even taken the unprecedented step of warning clubs of the “consequences” of voting against resuming football with neutral venues, as if it is Ronnie and Reggie Kray in charge. At least six clubs are said to have concerns about surrendering home advantage for the final nine games.

Barber and the Albion are one of the few clubs who have been brave enough to go public with their opposition to neutral venues.

Some have taken that to mean Brighton want the season cancelled or voided to preserve their Premier League place. That isn’t the case though – Barber is, quite rightly, just of the opinion that football should only return when it’s safe to do so under the same conditions we began the campaign with, namely 19 home and away games.

Which, according to some football supporters led by the normal dim suspects at Liverpool and Leeds, must mean that the third Brighton player to contract coronavirus is a situation that the Albion have concocted to get the season cancelled.

It’s hard to know where to begin with this nonsense. Clearly, the Premier League aren’t just going to accept Brighton saying that they’ve had a positive coronavirus test. This is the richest sports league in the world, not a primary school where a “the dog ate my homework” excuse might wash.

The Albion will have to prove that one of their players has contracted the virus to the Premier League. You’d have to be a complete idiot to think that a positive coronavirus test to a highly insured professional sportsman is the sort of thing that you could get away with lying about. And Brighton & Hove Albion aren’t run by idiots.

Other football supporters have tried to claim that it’s impossible that a third Albion player could have contracted coronavirus. A simple mathematics lesson proves that to be nonsense.

Coronavirus has a 1% kill rate. 50,000 people in the UK have (officially) died from it according to the ONS, which means that at least 5 million must have been infected already. Probably many more. But a third Brighton player catching it out of over 5 million people? Nah, that’s simply impossible.

The likelihood is that most Premier League squads will have had at least three players infected. The Albion have been open and honest about the coronavirus issues afflicting their staff; if other clubs did the same, then a third positive coronavirus test at Brighton wouldn’t be seen as abnormal by those who struggle to grasp basic maths – which is seemingly the majority of Leeds and Liverpool fans.

Then there is the accusation that Brighton deliberately infected a player in an attempt to get the season cancelled. Which would probably be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

Can you imagine how that conversation would have gone? Graham Potter gets his squad together on Zoom: “Right lads, new plan to avoid relegation. We’re going to intentionally infect one of you with deadly coronavirus…. any volunteers?”

Jason Steele raises his hand: “I’ll do it boss. I hate Liverpool and don’t want them to win the title.” Beram Kayal then says: “Tell you what lads, I hate Leeds, let’s f**k up their promotion chances by all getting coronavirus,” before biting into a Chinese bat he’d bought on the dark web.

Coronavirus is killing people everyday. To lie about a player having it would be completely unacceptable and a trick that no Premier League club would ever get away with.

As for a player deliberately contracting it, anyone who believes that as a realistic explanation should probably check into the nearest secure facility as soon as possible.

The world should be wishing a man a speedy recovery from a deadly virus, not spitting feathers because it means that 22 men might not be able to kick a ball around yet. How have we come this?