The number of Covid cases within the Reading squad has eased dramatically – meaning Wednesday night’s fixture against Fulham is likely to go ahead.
The Royals had to postpone their games against Luton Town and Peterborough United over the festive period due to a coronavirus outbreak within their squad. But the position appears to have brightened over the past couple of days, according to Berkshire Live reporter Jonathan Low. He also reports that Reading should have first choice full backs Andy Yiadom and Baba Rahman available for selection against Fulham as the pair have been allowed to delay their trips to Cameroon to represent Ghana in the Africa Cup of Nations until January.
A letter sent to all clubs advising them of the availability requirements for the competition suggests that players selected in competing squads can represent their clubs until January 3rd. This should mean that Marco Silva can select Ivory Coast midfielder Jean Michael Seri for upcoming matches as well.
The news from Swansea regarding Fulham’s fixture next Monday looks less positive with a postponement considered likely at present.
The next time we can play Championship football, assuming that we don’t have a 4th game postponed, Bournemouth could be 10 points ahead of us at the top of the table and Blackburn could be 6 points ahead of us in second place.
It doesn’t matter how many games in hand we may have; they don’t equal points-especially for a team struggling to regain form.
On top of that, we have to squeeze in the postponed games making our schedule crazy.
We also have to recover our match fitness after no Championship games for 5 days short of a month.
Make no mistake, this is a completely unfair period that Fulham FC is being forced to undergo.
Either all Championship games should have been postponed OR clubs should have been told to play through the “crisis”. It appears that most positive cases are showing only mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. It is suggested that a number of clubs are merely using this as an opportunity for injured players to recover.
Why could clubs with little or no positive cases not be allowed to reschedule fixtures against teams in a similar situation-thereby avoiding fixture backlogs and maintaining match fitness? It would only require a modicum of logical thought but I guess that is just too much to expect.
I am sure that Scott Parker has analysed the situation and, no doubt, motivated his players to make the most of their coming fixtures to open up a real gap at the top of the table; one that will be very difficult to close.