Manchester City players put to the test again before the game against Chelsea | Football news



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All Manchester City players and first team personnel will be retested for Covid-19 on Thursday, despite no new cases being recorded in Wednesday’s results, allowing the club to reopen the training ground.

The results of the next round of testing will be returned on Friday.

The first team group will be retested on Saturday, the day before the scheduled Premier League game against Chelsea.

The club reported on Monday “a series of positive cases” that led the Premier League to postpone the match against Everton.

Any player who has tested positive is currently on a 10-day self-isolation period and will not be available this weekend.

City have only confirmed two of the affected players, Kyle Walker and Gabriel Jesus, who tested positive on December 23, thus missing the Boxing Day victory over Newcastle.

Gabriel Jesus
Image:
Gabriel Jesus tested positive for coronavirus on Christmas day

Those two players can return to the first-team bubble on Sunday, provided they each deliver a negative test.

While it would be too late for them to rejoin the team to face Chelsea, they could return to training early next week.

That potentially means they would be available to take part against Manchester United in the Carabao Cup semi-final on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the Premier League confirmed 18 positive tests for coronavirus among players and staff in its latest round of testing (December 21-27), the highest number of the season so far.

The Premier League is not considering a possible circuit disruption at this time.

What are the criteria for a postponement?

The Premier League Board finally decides whether the matches can be postponed or not. While there are no hard and fast rules, each game is judged on a case-by-case basis, there are some guidelines.

For example, in the 2020/21 Premier League manual, clubs have been told that “permission will not be granted to postpone a league match where the requesting club has 14 or more players on its available team roster. “.

Earlier this season, teams were allowed to name 25 players to their Premier League team roster, and that doesn’t include registered under-21 players.

Man City, for example, according to the Premier League website, named 20 players to its list of Premier League teams. Ilkay Gundogan and Eric García are currently injured, with Walker and Jesús positive with coronavirus. That cuts their list of Premier League teams down to 16, but doesn’t take into account any subsequent positive cases that they may have discovered on Monday.

However, City may not even have had to drop below the 14-player level to have their match with Everton postponed. The Premier League Board has said it took medical advice into consideration when deciding to cancel that match, and there may be other factors that affected its decision.

What we do know, however, is that the Premier League Board only reorganizes games in “exceptional circumstances”.



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