Premier League clubs are set to discuss whether to postpone an entire round of festive fixtures at a meeting on Monday. Six of the 10 Premier League matches were called off this weekend because a series of clubs registered a spike in COVID-19 cases, leaving them unable to fulfill their fixtures. With that said, Chelsea had their request to postpone their clash with Wolves on Sunday afternoon rejected by the Premier League after it was decided they had enough fit players to fulfil the fixture. A decision that left Thomas Tuchel fuming.
Thomas Tuchel said: “We were putting the health and safety of players at huge risk, physically as well as with Covid. We can survive a game but eventually we will pay the price – maybe we are paying the price already. 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? 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. I don’t care so much about the next games. I just care about the next tests and the health of the players. We let Mateo Kovacic play 30 minutes one day after 10 days of Covid. We make him play, who takes responsibility for that? We have Kante one training session, Chalobah with two training sessions and maybe another injury. It is like this. We need to keep on going if they say we need to keep going.”
It remains to be seen how many players Tuchel will have fit for the Boxing Day clash against Aston Villa especially when you consider players have to self-isolate for 10 days after a positive test.
