15 players fit enough to play when Premier League resumes

Premier League clubs with only 15 fit players are still likely to have to play matches if the season resumes as planned next month during the coronavirus pandemic.

West Ham vice-chair Karren Brady has disclosed new details of Thursday's conference call of clubs when they agreed to restart the season on June 17, pending government approval.

The season was suspended in March after positive COVID-19 cases at Arsenal and Chelsea forced the squads into self-isolation.

Brady said the latest virtual meeting of club executives featured a long discussion about “what constitutes having a team fit enough to compete in the games left to play.”

Most teams, including West Ham, have nine



games remaining.

“There are obvious and genuine concerns about what happens to your match results if your club has a number of players testing positive for coronavirus, or is in self-isolation, and as a result you simply cannot field your usual or strongest starting XI,” Brady wrote in a column in Saturday's editions of “The Sun” newspaper.

“The Premier League are recommending a points-per-game formula to decide the award of places," Brady said. "This is a straightforward model whereby a team’s number of points is simply divided by the number of matches they have played.

The Premier League season is now due to end on the weekend of July 25-26, more than two months after originally scheduled.