Barber opposed to Premier League neutral venues

Paul Barber, the Chief Executive of Premier League Club, Brighton has voiced opposed the concept of completing the 2019/20 Premier League season at neutral venues in a report on the Club’s website.

The idea was one of the propositions of their widely publicized meeting on Friday last week as a safe solution to mitigate the growing health concerns.

“Clearly, we must all be prepared to accept some compromises, and we fully appreciate why playing behind closed doors is very likely to be a necessary compromise to play our remaining games while continuing to fully support the government’s efforts to contain the spread of coronavirus,” he said

“But at this critical point in the season playing matches in neutral venues has, in our view, potential to have a material effect on the integrity of the competition.”

Barber is worried about losing home advantage for five of their remaining nine games which are home games in the keenly contested relegation battle.

“The disadvantages of us not playing the league’s top teams in our home stadium and in familiar surroundings, even with 27,000 Albion fans very unlikely to be present at the Amex, are very obvious,” Barber said.

“Clearly, we must accept there may also be some benefit from playing our remaining four away matches at neutral venues but the fixture list simply isn’t equally balanced at this stage of the season, and we didn’t play our first 29 matches of the season in this way. So, in our opinion one thing doesn’t cancel out the other.”