PREMIER LEAGUE managers have debated the merits of continuing the season amid a coronavirus resurgence which continues to wreak havoc with scheduling at all levels of the English game.
Aston Villa’s FA Cup tie against Liverpool this evening is going ahead, even though nine players and five members of staff at the Midlands club are understood to have tested positive for Covid-19.
Villa fielded a line-up featuring under-23 and under-18 players for the cup tie, but question marks surround their ability to fulfil the Premier League fixture against Tottenham on Wednesday and the following weekend’s game against Everton.
Marine look to stun Spurs after helping hand 1 Jan 2021
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When Marine FC welcome Tottenham Hotspur to their Marine Travel Arena on Merseyside in the FA Cup, the non-league will target arguably the biggest giantkilling in the competition s history.
Sunday s tie marks another milestone for the Merseyside club, which has been transformed over the last couple of years with the help of Premier League funding.
Marine play in Division One North West of the Northern Premier League, the eighth tier of English football, and in 2019 a grant from the Football Stadia Improvement Fund (FSIF) transformed their fortunes.
MARINE striker Niall Cummins is hoping to keep his school pupils happy when he comes up against Tottenham in the FA Cup third round on Sunday.
The Northern Premier League side, playing in the eighth tier of English football, welcome Jose Mourinho’s superstars to the Marine Travel Arena for the biggest mismatch in FA Cup history.
By day Cummins is a secondary school teacher but this weekend he will be trying to get the better of the likes of Eric Dier, Toby Alderweireld and Davinson Sanchez.
“I am a high-school teacher in a secondary school in south Manchester,” Cummins said today. “Every kid has given me some stick, ‘Are you going to do this to this player, are you going to score, whose shirt are you going to ask for.’
After Warrington Town s wait for a return to league action was extended following the postponement of both of their Christmas fixtures, chairman Toby Macormac sat down with Guardian sports reporter Matt Turner to discuss the state of play, both at the club and for the league as a whole.
MT: So can you outline the club’s position on getting the season started again as soon as possible? TM: We’re willing to play games. We’ve got people who have bought season tickets, which was much-needed revenue coming into the season, and we took that money on the basis that we’d be playing matches.
WITTON Albion have confirmed both of their planned fixtures over the festive period have been postponed. Carl Macauley s side were scheduled to welcome Warrington Town to Wincham Park on Boxing Day before travelling to Nantwich Town on New Year s Day. However, the club have confirmed they have exercised the option to postpone both fixtures. Clubs were given the option to opt out of playing over the festive period after the Northern Premier League initially said Boxing Day would see a full programme of fixtures resume. That move was criticised by clubs, with concerns over crowd capacities, the inability to serve refreshments in grounds and the allocation of government funding as loans rather than grants the major sticking points said to make hosting fixtures financially unviable for many.